Author Description

WINNER OF THE 2017 CICADA PRIZE FOR POETRY - MAI VAN PHAN - ACCLAIMED AS THE VIETNAMESE 'PEOPLES' POET'. PAPERBACK NOW INCLUDES FREE KINDLE EBOOK"Out of the Dark" consists of two distinctive parts, "The Next Day"and "And Suddenly the Wind Blew" In this volume of collected poems, Mai Van Phan has quietly plowed fields of poetry, using an abundance of domestic resources and human experience. In both sections of the book, there is strong evidence that Mai Van Phan is defining a new way of poetry as evident in his use of combinations: of describing and questioning, of experiencing and wondering, of criticising and greeting, of worrying and searching; between dealth and life, fight, blood, tears and raw, painful smile. "The Next Day"is written as an illusion, a question and there is realization that somebody (the poet perhaps) is drawing their own life with reality. In contrast, "And Suddenly the Wind Blew" no longer portrays vicious circles of life but heralds close and intimate observations of purity: in spring, in fall, between lovers, in clouds, the wind, in flowers and the ritual of the earth and rhythm. "The Next Day", by leaving behind academic elegance, fades the boundary between high class and common culture and reaches readers by using simple language where reality is mentioned through tráh, scrap, trash cans, even impotence... And it ends with a voice choked at the larynx, among the dust and lies of life, a dark and dusty picture painted by the left hemisphere, a thriving reality of postmodern, soot, trash, paranoia and fear; a haunting reality. The end of "The Next Day" is a rare insightful hypothesis where black fish and a sharp trap are waiting for the dawn. In "And Suddenly the Wind Blew", the poem has shifted from negative to positive, from darkness to the light, from night to day, from birth to crack open the great realm of nature's seasonal fruit crops. It is still