T.S. Eliot Prize Awarded to Ocean Vuong's Debut

[Bouvre]

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After becoming the first literate person in his family and a prize-winning poet festooned with awards, Ocean Vuong has now won perhaps his most prestigious accolade yet for his debut collection: the TS Eliot prize.

Reflecting on the aftermath of war over three generations, 29-year-old Vuong’s first collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, has already landed the Forward prize for best first collection, as well as the Whiting and the Thom Gunn awards. 

Vuong is only the second debut poet to win the TS Eliot prize. Chair of judges Bill Herbert called Night Sky With Exit Wounds “a compellingly assured debut, the definitive arrival of a significant voice”.

“There is an incredible power in the story of this collection,” said Herbert. “There is a mystery at the heart of the book about generational karma, this migrant figure coming to terms with his relationship with his past, his relationship with his father and his relationship with his sexuality. All of that is borne out in some quite extraordinary imagery. The view of the world from this book is quite stunning.”

Born in Saigon, Vuong spent a year in a refugee camp as a baby and migrated to America when he was two years old, where he was raised by his mother, grandmother and aunt. Two aspects of Vuong’s life – his sexuality and the absence of his father – recur in his work, with several poems evoking Greek myth to explore the roles of fathers and sons. “Western mythology is so charged with the father,” he told the Guardian in 2017. “Personally, I’m always asking who’s my father. Like Homer, I felt I’d better make it up.”

Vuong, who now lives in Massachusetts and works as an assistant professor in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, only gained a taste for poetry in his 20s. He initially put together Night Sky With Exit Wounds for a competition that promised personal rejection to all entrants. “I said, ‘Oh my, a personal rejection. Maybe that’ll give me some tips and push me back out there with a better idea,’” Vuong has recalled – but he received a publishing deal instead.

After winning the Forward prize, Vuong told the Guardian that he suspected dyslexia runs in his family, but felt it had positively affected his writing: “I think perhaps the disability helped me a bit, because I write very slowly and see words as objects. I’m always trying to look for words inside words. It’s so beautiful to me that the word laughter is inside slaughter.”

Edited January 18, 2018 by Bouvre