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Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds and The New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.  A recipient of the 2019 MacArthur “Genius Grant,” he is also the winner of the Whiting Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize.  His writings have been featured in The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times.  Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Time Is a Mother 2023 Shortlist

Cape Poetry, UK
Penguin Press, USA
Purchase (Cape Poetry)
Purchase (Penguin Press)

Judges’ Citation

Time Is a Mother is a breathtaking poetry book that rediscovers the voice of loss and the fragile layers of identity.  Vuong’s writing is visceral, shaped like а relief map of unpredictable past and present.

Time Is a Mother is a breathtaking poetry book that rediscovers the voice of loss and the fragile layers of identity.  Vuong’s writing is visceral, shaped like а relief map of unpredictable past and present. One of the most striking aspects of his poetry is the way in which he captures the passage of time, placing the seed of new worlds into time’s womb.  He reflects on the ways in which memory becomes our body, and how the past can walk alongside us and open the doors of non-inherited grief and love. Time Is a Mother was written after the death of his mother — his silent muse and protector from the sharp edges of new borders and languages. He once said: ‘As a woman of color, an Asian woman, in the world, she taught me how to be vigilant. How people’s faces, posture, tone, could be read. She taught me how to make everything legible when language was not.’ Her death opened the window of eternal dialogue between them. Behind the shadows of loss, grief, and abandonment, his poetry reflects the strong echo of a ritualistic celebration of life and hope.


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