As Long As Trees Last
"[Nguyen] shares such a streetwise feminism, keeping the edge and making it something you can dance to."—The Poetry Project
Clear-eyed and grounded, Hoa Nguyen performs a hook and snare on what it means to be a twenty-first century human in the nearly ego-less space of these chiseled yet spacious poems.
It's not a time to run
I wear soft shoes
and it took a long time
to walk here
Hoa Nguyen is the co-founder of Skanky Possum. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.
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. As a public proponent and advocate of contemporary poetry, she has served as guest editor for The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2018 and judge for the 2020 Griffin Prize for Poetry, and she has performed and lectured at numerous institutions, including Princeton University, Bard College, Poet’s House, and the Banff Centre’s Writers Studio. 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. Her writing has garnered attention from such outlets as The PBS News Hour, Granta, The Walrus, New York Times, and Poetry, among others. Born in the Mekong Delta and raised and educated in the United States, Nguyen has lived in Canada since 2011.
