Poet and visual artist Truong Tran was born in Saigon, Vietnam. He earned his MFA from San Francisco State University and is the author of five collections of poetry: The Book of Perceptions (1999), a finalist for a Kiriyama Prize; placing the accents (1999), a finalist for a Western States Book Award for Poetry; dust and conscience (2000), winner of a San Francisco State Poetry Center Prize; within the margin (2004); and four letter words (2008), 100 words (co-authored with Damon Potter, 2021), and book of the other (2021). He is also the author of the children’s book Going Home, Coming Home (2003) and the artist monograph I Meant to Say Please Pass the Sugar.

Tran has described himself as primarily a visual artist whose “alter ego” is a poet, and has said he believes that art, be it poetry, cooking, sculpting and even gardening, are his ways of thinking through the consciousness of the times we live in. Of the endeavor that is book of the other, Tran says,

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I set out to write a book with the premise and constraint of honesty. It took a decade of struggle to write, to circle back, to say the thing that needed to be said and perhaps another lifetime to hold. This book is not the performance of anger. It is angry. This book is not performing otherness. I am the other or so I am told again and again.

Tran is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including The Poetry Center Prize, The Fund for Poetry Grant, The California Arts Council Grant, numerous San Francisco Arts Commission grants, and an Intersection for the Arts Writer in Residency Fellowship. His poems and books have been translated into Spanish, French and Dutch. His visual art has been shown in Bay Area galleries such as Intersection, APAture, Kearny Street Workshop, and A. Muse Gallery.

Tran lives in San Francisco and currently teaches at Mills College, Oakland.

Poems About Motherhood