{"id":11947,"date":"2026-03-31T15:48:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T15:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/?page_id=11947"},"modified":"2026-03-31T15:54:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T15:54:41","slug":"poet-and-essayist-hai-dang-phan-talks-birds-migration-and-poetic-returns-to-lineage-at-literary-salon","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/home-2\/the-words-march-26\/poet-and-essayist-hai-dang-phan-talks-birds-migration-and-poetic-returns-to-lineage-at-literary-salon\/","title":{"rendered":"Poet and Essayist Hai-Dang Phan Talks Birds, Migration, and Poetic Returns to Lineage at Literary Salon"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sarah Tachau ’27<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hai-Dang<\/figure>
\n

On a mid-March afternoon, English and Creative Writing students and staff packed into the sun-soaked Harmon Room to hear the naturalistic, billowy poems and prose of visiting author and translator, Hai-Dang Phan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A professor of English at Grinnell College, Phan\u2019s credentials span beyond his employment\u2014he has taught at the Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop, received fellowships from Bread Loaf and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has been published in Best American Poetry 2016, New England Review,<\/em> and The New Yorker<\/em>. Vietnam-born and Wisconsin-raised, through his work he explores themes of familial roots, introspection, and, most notably, birdwatching. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phan\u2019s visit included a Q&A in Professor Michael Prior\u2019s Creative Nonfiction class, an intimate coffee hour with English and Creative Writing students, and a reading of his poetry and prose open to all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phan recited a handful of poems from his 2019 collection, Reenactments<\/em>, a work that, in his words, \u201cgrapples with the legacy of war as a generational kid who grew up across the river in Wisconsin.\u201d He returned to \u201cSelf-Portrait With New Weapons Systems,\u201d written in his 30s, noting that it was fun to reread it from a different, older perspective, \u201cit feels like a reenactment,\u201d he said. In addition to conversing with his past self, he spoke with his father through a reading of \u201cMy Father\u2019s \u2018Norton Introduction to Literature,\u2019 Third Edition (1981).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While his older poetic work circled around collaboration with his lineage, Phan attempted in his newer work to \u201cgive [himself] permission and intention to write in the present.\u201d He talked in his coffee hour about the \u201cglimmer\u201d or the \u201canti-trigger:\u201d the thing that centers the writer to home and belonging. The grounding factors in the writer\u2019s life\u2014such as rivers, communities, birds\u2014are all \u201cglimmers.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phan read his silky poem, \u201cRiver,\u201d winding the room along in a meditation on familiarities and time. He transitioned into his \u201cbird nerd\u201d work with his poem \u201cFrom the Pines,\u201d a love letter to the fledgling creatures of his mother\u2019s backyard in Georgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

There is no better gift than the words of a poet-turned-essayist. Phan proved this point by reading a draft titled \u201cLetter from Mekong Delta\u201d from his upcoming prose collection. Recalling a trip back to his place of birth, Phan wrote of his birdwatching travels with his father in Vietnam, vividly characterizing their local guide and world-renowned birdwatcher on the platform eBird, \u201cToby,\u201d and addressing the rare Spoon-billed Sandpiper directly.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"Students<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Prof.<\/figure>
\n

To Phan, birdwatching is more than a case of what he calls \u201cbiophilia,\u201d it is a lens through which one can study displacement from homelands in endangered species such as the Spoon-billed Sandpiper. Further, he credited his hobby of patient observing, or, in his words, \u201cto put myself in the way of something I had never seen before,\u201d as a beneficial creative practice. He recommended field notebooks as a way to shake off the analytical urge of a writer and be present. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the Q&A, Phan credited non- fiction as a \u201cprotein form\u201d\u2014a challenge to balance structure, scenes, characters, dialogue, and his poetic tendencies. He emphasized the use of refreshing metaphors and language: \u201cEver since we had language and drew on caves, we were trying to describe things,\u201d he claimed.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Words<\/em> would like to thank Phan for taking the time out of his busy week to engage with the English and Creative Writing department on various thoughtful levels.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sarah Tachau ’27 On a mid-March afternoon, English and Creative Writing students and staff packed into the sun-soaked Harmon Room to hear the naturalistic, billowy poems and prose of visiting author and translator, Hai-Dang Phan.  A professor of English at Grinnell College, Phan\u2019s credentials span beyond his employment\u2014he has taught at the Iowa Writers\u2019 […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1051,"featured_media":0,"parent":11937,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11947","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1051"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11947"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12049,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11947\/revisions\/12049"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}