Description

Discover the Sunday Times bestselling collection from the TikTok sensation and author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

‘One of the most important poets of his generation’
ANDREW MCMILLAN, author of Physical

‘Powerful’
DUA LIPA

‘Redefines our idea of what an elegy can do it, what it is for’
ILYA KAMINSKY, author of Deaf Republic

In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Vivid, brave and propulsive, Vuong’s poems contend with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the value of joy in a perennially fractured American spirit.

The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time is a Mother is a return and a forging-forth all at once.

Publisher Review

Ocean Vuong, one of my favourite contemporary poets, expanded his body of work beautifully in Time Is a Mother. * Observer * A remarkable return: Vuong's unparalleled luminosity of phrase, his perfected pinpoint accuracy of image is here placed alongside a thrilling expansion of voice and gaze which further confirms Vuong as one of the most important poets of his generation. -- Andrew McMillan, author of Physical These 28 accomplished poems explore grief, trauma, family... Language itself, in all its power and violence, falls under Vuong's incomparable scrutiny. * Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2022* * Tender and heartbreaking ... Delving back into the visceral themes that made his 2019 novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous a revelation, Vuong traverses the intensely personal and the broadly political with grace and courage. * TIME * There's something about Vuong's writing that demands all of your lungs. The succinct line arrangement and absence of full stops in poems... force you to breath heavy. * Observer * Vuong's... poems passionately and inventively articulate the difficulties of understanding and accepting selfhood alongside the varieties of life beyond it. * Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year* * Not since Emily Dickinson has poetry found such an oceanic openness of the self's quiet laceration and cautious resilience. In Time Is A Mother Ocean Vuong's words are bullets travelling through the page and hitting us with debris resembling our memory of art, love, grief and acts of survival... We find ourselves being salvaged and released into a world where a word, a turn of phrase, or a line makes a difficult moment bearable. There is a violent process of fermentation in Vuong's poems that keeps poetry pungent, truth-seeking and unerasable. -- Kit Fan, author of Diamond Hill Vuong writes... with such a sensitive scrutiny, breathtaking in its expression. * Financial Times, *Books of the Year* * [A] stirring collection of poetry. [Vuong] experiments with language and form while probing the aftermath of his mother's death and his determination to survive it. Take your time with these poems, and return to them often. * Washington Post * An incredibly impactful collection, there's no doubt Time Is A Mother will strike a chord with most. * Gay Times, *Books of the Year* * A profound and accomplished collection. * Dazed Digital, *Books to Look Out For 2022* * Heartbreaking and perfect. * White Review, *Books of the Year* * [An] indispensable collection. * ArtReview * A gorgeous, moving and awe-inspiring gathering of poems that feel like award-winning short films. These vignettes of loss, grief and love will take your breath away. * Skinny, *Books of the Year* *