Ocean Vuong | undertow & upheaval

Breathing easier in a more expansive and hopeful world is a real joy and delight. Especially after the past four years of waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop. 

What we believe, how we show up - each moment defines who we are and how we live our lives. With the Trumpian error hopelessly dead and gone, we can now turn to better and brighter interactions. 

We need more sage!

At Biden's inauguration, youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman paved the way for many of us to learn and love the beauty and power of well constructed and definitive language. 

Here too is another inspirational young poet - Ocean Vuong. Born in Saigon, Vietnam he resides in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he serves as an Associate Professor in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at UMass-Amherst.

Ocean Vuong - brilliant & original

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong - TS Eliot Prize for Poetry winner for Night Sky With Exit Wounds - writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are.

Ocean Vuong - The Waterstones Interview

In this eloquent interview we are treated to Vuong as he discourses in his evocative words about language, form, sex and the opioid crisis in America - just some of the themes contained within his brilliant book of universal appeal.

Q&A with Ocean Vuong

The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers this incredibly important debut novel. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

Under our changed circumstances this birthright is even more valuable to us today. Humanity is evolving well with Gorman and Vuong forging ahead. we would do well to watch and learn.

Ocean Vuong at The New Salon, NYU