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August 24, 2005

Bui Chat, Translated by Linh Dinh

We visited NYC the other weekend, caught a great reading by Linh Dinh and immediately after having him to sign a copy of his latest book, complete with an obscene inscription to a friend, we asked him if he wanted to pony up to the Rock Heals bar.

And he got all like “hmmm.” And asked what about running some translations he’d been working on of contemporary Vietnamese poets.

Days later these from Bui Chat arrived and bam. Precocious little motherfucker out there ass-kicking and getting himself throwing in jail for the WORD. And then we realized he must be 25-ish, which I guess isn’t precocious anymore. We’re getting old. He’s rocking out.

Bui Chat is the pen name of Bui Quang Vien. Born in 1979 in Bien Hoa, he lives in Ho Chi Minh City. A member of the infamous Mo Mieng [Open Mouth] group, Bui Chat has been published on webzines and in group samizdats such as Six-Sided Circle (2002) and Open Mouth (2002), and in his own Disturbances Today (2003). In 2004, he and fellow poet Ly Doi were jailed for two days for passing out flyers at a poetry reading cancelled by the police. The poems here will be included in The Deluge: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry scheduled to be released in 2006 from Chax Press.

Linh Dinh is the author of two collections of stories, Fake House (Seven Stories Press 2000) and Blood and Soap (Seven Stories Press 2004), and three books of poems, All Around What Empties Out (Tinfish 2003), American Tatts (Chax 2005) and Borderless Bodies (Factory School 2005). His work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, Best American Poetry 2004, Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, among other places.

Posted by Rock Heals at August 24, 2005 12:45 AM