I was raised in a one-bedroom apartment in Hartford. On preserving his Vietnamese culture in the U.S. As you can see, her mind was already a mind geared and keen towards the imagination. I always say that I come from a line of poets even though my family cannot read or write. When she learned what that word was, and what it meant - which is a body of water that touches both America and Vietnam, she decided to rename me Ocean. One summer day she said, 'It's so hot, I wish I was at the beach,' except she pronounced it in a word that resembled a derogatory term.Īnd so the customer suggested, 'why not ocean?' She was working in a nail salon, and like many Vietnamese immigrants she learned English just talking to customers. Just after the lights go out, when you can still see Like how the spineĪre you listening? The most beautiful part at the age of 2 as a child refugee.Don't worry. Selected by Foreign Policy magazine as a 2016 “100 Leading Global Thinker,” alongside Hillary Clinton, Ban Ki-Moon and Warsan Shire, Vuong was also named by BuzzFeed Books as one of “32 Essential Asian American Writers” and has been profiled on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” “PBS NewsHour,” Teen Vogue, VICE, The Fantastic Man and The New Yorker.īorn in Saigon, he immigrated to the U.S. Vuong’s writings have been featured in The Atlantic, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice, and American Poetry Review, which awarded him the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets. The Eliot prize is the latest in a string of honors for Vuong’s book, including Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Previous winners have included Ted Hughes, Carol Ann Duffy, Alice Oswald and Seamus Heaney. It is distinctive among poetry prizes in being judged by a panel of established poets. Eliot Prize, inaugurated in 1993, has been described as “the prize most poets want to win” and “the world’s top poetry prize.” The prize is awarded annually to the author of the best new collection of poetry published in the U.K. It is a compellingly assured debut, the definitive arrival of a significant voice.”

15 in London.Ĭhair of judges Bill Herbert said Vuong’s collection “deals with the aftermath of war and migration over three generations. Vuong, who is an assistant professor in UMass Amherst’s MFA for Poets and Writers program, received the £25,000 prize on Jan. Eliot Prize for his debut collection “Night Sky with Exit Wounds,” which addresses themes of migration, America and Vietnam, his country of birth. Poet Ocean Vuong of the University of Massachusetts Amherst is the winner of the 2017 T.S.

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