by Tue Sy
Translated from the Vietnamese by Nguyen Ba Chung and Martha Collins
Published: Thu Oct 15 2020
Diego Isaias Hernández Méndez, Convertiendse en Characoteles / Sorcerers Changing into Their Animal Forms (detail), 2013, oil on canvas. Arte Maya Tz’utujil Collection.
AGNI 92
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Street at Noon
Tue Sy, born in Laos as Pham Van Thuong, became a monk at a very early age. A well-known dissident in Vietnam, he was imprisoned for fourteen years, and remains one of the foremost scholars of Buddhism in the country. His poems, in English translations by Nguyen Ba Chung and Martha Collins, have appeared in Gulf Coast, AGNI, Two Lines, Consequence, Salamander, and elsewhere. (updated 9/2020)
Nguyen Ba Chung, a writer and poet, is the co-translator of A Time Far Past by Le Luu; Mountain River: Vietnamese Poetry from The Wars 1948–1993; Distant Road: Selected Poems of Nguyen Duy; Zen Poems from Early Vietnam; and other volumes. He served for many years as research associate at the William Joiner Institute at UMass Boston. (updated 9/2020)
Martha Collins is the author of ten collections of poetry, most recently Because What Else Could I Do (Pittsburgh, 2019), Night Unto Night (Milkweed, 2018), and Admit One: An American Scrapbook (Pittsburgh, 2016). She has co-translated four volumes of Vietnamese poetry, including Black Stars: Poems by Ngo Tu Lap (Milkweed, 2013, with the author). She founded the creative writing program at UMass Boston and taught at Oberlin College for ten years. (updated 9/2020)