Past Griffin shortlisted poet and judge Hoa Nguyen will present her new collection, A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure (Wave Books, 2021). Register for this free Zoom event here: https://cambridgepl.libcal.com/event/7699918

A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure  (Wave Books, 2021) is a poetic meditation on historical, personal, and cultural pressures pre- and post-“Fall-of-Saigon” with verse biography on the poet’s mother, Di?p Anh Nguy?n, a stunt motorcyclist in an all-women Vietnamese circus troupe. Multilayered, plaintive, and provocative, these poems are alive with archive and inhabit histories. By turns lyrical and unsettling, Hoa Nguyen‘s poetry sings of language and loss; dialogues with time, myth and place; and communes with past and future ghosts.

Hoa Nguyen is the author of several books of poetry, including As Long As Trees Last, Red Juice, and Violet Energy Ingots, which received a 2017 Griffin Prize nomination. Recipient of a 2019 Pushcart Prize and a 2020 Neustadt International Prize for Literature nomination, she has received grants and fellowships from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the MacDowell Colony, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Born in the Mekong Delta and raised and educated in the United States, Nguyen has lived in Canada since 2011.

This program is presented by the Cambridge Public Library in partnership with the Mayor’s Office and the City Manager’s Office.