you pull a gun to the sun
force its hot tongue on my austral breasts
ask for the pluviophile experience
saline taste of fifty fairy children to sea
resinous taste of fifty dragon children to woodland
you entrap the low nimbostratus
force its widespread head between my thighs
ask for the cloud walker experience
one pious pillar of wet pink lotus
bronze drum cleaving tides from red river delta
from “Game of Exiled Bondage”
...a tour de force.
Trinh Y Thu
She, Self-Winding is a collection of poems that explores, through skewed narrative and shrewd linguistic play, the trajectory of an immigrant girl from a remote village who endures the aftermath of a civil war as she makes her escape by boat, leaves behind a home country, copes with domestic violence and abuse as a teenager, and grows up in a democratic Western society as a woman forming her own social and sexual paradigms, all in times of incredulity.
Luu Dieu Van was born in Vietnam and migrated to the US at a very young age. She is a prolific translator and is currently co-editor of the prominent Vietnamese-English literary magazine Da Mau. She holds an M.B.A. from the University of Massachusetts, and devotes time between painting and volunteering for her charity organization that provides support for underprivileged children. She is the author of 47 Minutes After 7 (Van Nghe), M of December (Vagabond Press), and Century of Scapegoating (Van Hoc Press), and co-author of The Transparent Greenness of Grass (Tre Publishing House) and Poems of Lưu Diệu Vân, Lưu Mêlan, Nhã Thuyên (Vagabond Press).
Luu Dieu Van’s poems are interesting because of her skillful and exquisite usage of imagery. In fact, it’s a tour de force. In almost every single poem, one could find an intriguing effect created by the peculiar choice of words that she inserts at the right place and the right time.
Trinh Y Thu, author of The Ruins of Mirages
Luu Dieu Van’s poetry has a strong emphasis on diction, it employs a language which addresses the public. Her poetry is not for the page alone, it is also for the tongue, for the performance stage. It is a spoken voice, the audience will hear the wit of the words, the exuberance of the vernacular and the energy of the speech.
Nguyen Tien Hoang, author of Captive and Temporal
Rich in theme, with a brave and lively selection of imagery, Van excels at incisive observation—at times tragic, and more often than not, very funny.
Jennifer Mackenzie, author of Navigable Ink
Jennifer Mackenzie reviews M of December by Lưu Diệu Vân
Jennifer Mackenzie reviews Poems of Lưu Diệu Vân, Lưu Mêlan & Nhã Thuyên, Nguyễn Tiên Hoàng
Trịnh Y Thư reads Lưu Diệu Vân, Lưu Mêlan & Nhã Thuyên: Into The Gate of Imagination
M of December by Lưu Diệu Vân (Vagabond Press)
Poems of Lưu Diệu Vân, Lưu Mêlan & Nhã Thuyên, Nguyễn Tiên Hoàng (Vagabond Press)
Work by Lưu Diệu Vân on Da Mau
Lưu Diệu Vân translates Michael Brennan
Magazine feature on Lưu Diệu Vân
Chapbook
40 pp, 5.75 x 7 in
Publication Date: September 15 2022
Distribution: Asterism Books (US)