Coming Full Circle: An Interview

Abstract

Nguyen Duy was born in 1946 in the village of Dong Ve in Thanh Hoa Province, Viet Nam. From 1965 to 1975, he served as a signal soldier, laying down communication lines for the field command in the South, where he fought in most of the major campaigns. As a response to the hardship and suffering at the front, he began writing poetry, and as his work came to be known, his poems were read over the radio. After the war, he settled in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), where he became the Southern editor for the literary journal Van Nghe. Nguyen Duy's poetry evolved through the late 199os, when he traveled to the United States and Europe and collaborated with Vietnamese artists, choreographers, and musicians in programs that integrated various artistic forms. The author of over a dozen books of poetry, three memoirs, and a novel-including the collection Distant Road: Selected Poems, translated into English by Kevin Bowen and Nguyen Ba Chung-he announced in 1997 that he would no longer write poems. In the following conversation, conducted in Vietnamese in August 2001, Duy makes a distinction between the phrase o nuoc ngoai (live abroad) and hai ngoai (overseas). The phrase o nuoc ngoai is less of a divisive term than hai ngoai, as it, by denotation as well as connotation, indicates Vietnamese who live outside of Viet Nam, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. Hai ngoai, a phrase of Sino-Vietnamese origin, is virtually identical in meaning but indicates those who have gone overseas under duress.