Translator's Introduction to Change — Web Exclusive
By Martha Collins
Born in Hanoi in 1962, Ngo Tu Lap (Ngô Tự Lập) spent his childhood in Vinh Phu, about sixty miles from Hanoi, where his family, like many others, was evacuated during the Vietnam-American War. He received a degree in navigation in the former USSR, became a navy captain, graduated from law school, and in 1993 began a career as a literary editor. He received a fellowship to study literature in Paris in 1995, and in 2006 received his PhD in English from Illinois State University, where he also worked for Dalkey Archive Press.
In Vietnam, where he makes his permanent home, he has published three collections of poems, four books of fiction, three books of essays, and numerous translations from Russian, French, and English. He has won many literary prizes in Vietnam, and has had translations of his work published in India, Sweden, Belgium, France, Germany, Canada, and the United States.
Like most but not all of his contemporaries, Ngo Tu Lap writes in free verse. His poems often use traditional Vietnamese imagery, which itself reflects Vietnamese culture and landscape, but in a style that is quite evocative and surreal. This sometimes makes it difficult to know how a Vietnamese reader would respond to particular passages.
Like many Vietnamese poems, Lap’s are very condensed: it’s not easy, in translation, to create enough breathing space in the lines to allow the reader to experience the full emotional effect. Vietnamese lacks articles and tenses, and a Vietnamese writer may omit subject pronouns, which create additional challenges. On the other hand, Vietnamese pronouns are often less ambiguous than they may be in translation: in the original, it’s immediately clear that the “you” in the last stanza of “Change” is female (em), for instance.
All of Ngo Tu Lap’s poems reflect a deep attachment to place. That place is most frequently and poignantly Vietnam, but the countries where he has lived and studied also feature in his work. The poems often reflect routes between places as well: roads, paths, and the sea experienced by the navy captain often provide links between more abstract human distances and differences.
Martha Collins is the author of White Papers and Blue Front. She is the editor-at-large for Field magazine and has published two collections of cotranslated Vietnamese poetry.
This introduction is published in conjunction with Counterfeits, the 18th volume of TWO LINES, which includes translations of over 30 international writers. To learn more and order your own copy, visit this page.