Leica M6, 2004
Hanoi
Ho Chi Minh City
Woman on a Scooter, Hanoi
An excellent article in Asymptote:
A Deluge of New Vietnamese Poetry by Hai Dan-Phang
"In the audio clip of Nguyen Quoc Chanh reading his poetry you can actually hear the sounds of a city: the drone of motorbikes gliding down avenues, stray horn beeps of taxis angling through congestion, an emphatic voice from the crowd rising and breaking like a lone cloud. To my ears, it sounds just like Ho Chi Minh City. The porousness of the echo-chamber that constitutes the studio for this recording is especially audible mid-way into the third-line of the first poem in Chanh's samizdat Hey, I'm Here (2005):
Saigon punctured, a corpse not yet buried, the capital sinks a few inches each day [...] words survive thanks to crossbreeding [...] A national secret is the feasts derived from the fortunes of poppies, to be human is to be humiliated, to be Vietnamese is to be super humiliated [...] Someone advertises on the Web: I need a sexual partner who's a vanguard in thoughts and actions…"
Mother & Child, Hanoi
"Despite such obvious changes, the stories demonstrate the continued importance of the family, which on the one hand provides support for learning skills or finding a job and on the other hand needs support. This latter need is often the prime motivator to endure long separations and sometimes hard, dirty, dangerous or tedious work"
Boys, Hanoi
Boys, Hanoi
Dog, Hanoi
Boy, Hanoi
Floating Sweet Dumpling
My body is powdery white and round
I sink and bob like a mountain in a pond
The hand that kneads me is hard and rough
You can't destroy my true red heart