Announcement: 12.07.2024 – English Talk by Nhã Thuyên: "Up\\rooted: Drifting With and Moving Inward to Poetics of Vietnamese Utterances"

12 July 2024, by AAI Webmaster

Photo: Nhã Thuyên, cropped

We kindly invite you to this talk on Friday, July 12, 2024, at 16:00–18:00 h (CEST/MESZ).

Diễn đàn văn hóa Việt Nam /
Forum of Vietnamese Culture /
Forum der vietnamesischen Kultur:

Talk by
Nhã Thuyên,
Hanoi:

"Up\\rooted: Drifting With and Moving Inward to Poetics of Vietnamese Utterances"

 Friday, 12.07.2024
16:00 – 18:00 h (CEST)
 
Universität Hamburg
Asia-Africa-Institute
Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Flügel Ost ("East Wing")
room O-120
20146 Hamburg

This talk will be held in English!

Open to public! – Admission free!

The Department of Vietnamese Studies, Hamburg University cordialles invites to a talk by the poet and translator Nhã Thuyên, Hanoi, who is currently a DAAD artist-in-residence in Germany.

The talk will be introduced and chaired by Professor Thomas Engelbert.

About the speaker and her talk:

Nhã Thuyên anchors herself to Hanoi, Vietnam, and totters between languages. She has authored several books in Vietnamese and/or in English translations, including viết (writing, 2008), rìa vực (edge of the abyss, 2011), từ thở, những người lạ (words breathe, creatures of elsewhere, 2015), and bất\ \tuẫn: những hiện diện [tự-] vắng trong thơ Việt (un\ \martyred: [self-]vanishing presences in Vietnamese poetry, 2019). Translations of her poetry and writing appear in some journals including Asymptote, Cordite Review, The Margins, Words Without Border, the Lifted Brow, Jacket2, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, and some other places. Her next book of poetry, vị nước (taste of water), is forthcoming. She has been unearthing her notebooks and rubbing her words in Berlin as a 2023 DAAD's Artists-in-Berlin fellow, and learning to quietly speak up with care.

The discussion centers around the questions of the politics and the poetics of the marginalized in Vietnamese literature, with an attempt at understanding Vietnamese literature in its plural and fragmented entity, historically and culturally. The research approaches this literature, especially poetry as a specific concern, of the writers who hold onto writing in Vietnamese far from home but have not yet been fairly recognized as a contribution to Vietnamese literature as a whole, and of the writers who remain in Vietnam with a very limited readership. Where do the writers belong? In what way can we practically bring together all the writers into a shared house of Vietnamese literature and language? What are and have been the major issues of these literatures in the past and what are the possible literary responsibilities for a Vietnamese writer/literary scholar in the present? And in the end, what does it mean to be a Vietnamese writer (and why should we ask this question)? This project proposes a voyage "moving outward" (researching the politics and poetics of the writers overseas), and in tandem, "returning inward" (attuning to the politics and poetics  of the poets who stay in Vietnam), accompanying and being accompanied by the drifting poetics of the Vietnamese language.

Please note:

This talk will be held in-site at the Asia-Africa-Institute. There will be no Zoom access to this talk.

You might also be interested in our department's Instagram account.