by Alice Asch ’22
The Words is thrilled to share some exciting news: one of our very own English majors, Ngoc Pham ‘22, recently became a finalist for the prestigious Adroit Journal’s 2021 Poetry Prize! On top of this already impressive honor, Ngoc’s poem “How to Tell It’s Winter in Vietnamese” was published in Issue 39 of the journal. Adroit’s annual contest is open to any high school or college student, and was judged this year by acclaimed author Carl Phillips.
Ngoc was kind enough to answer some questions for us via email. Enjoy their responses, and we encourage you to read their beautiful poem!
What were your inspirations behind writing this piece?
I wrote this while living back home in Vietnam. It was the first time that I’d been back in a few years, and I was having trouble recalling common Vietnamese words or even responding to my name. It got me to think a lot about my relationship with Vietnamese as someone who writes in English, and my inability to express myself personally or poetically in my own mother tongue. This poem is part of my attempt to reconcile that.
Do you remember when you first started the poem? How has it evolved since then?
This poem starts with a note in my phone’s note app that I kept looking at for over a year, which is usually how all my poems start. My poems almost always begin from a single point of fixation, and for this poem it was the fact that I couldn’t find the Vietnamese names for things in my house. It was important for me to preserve that image, and I wrote the rest of the poem around it. This poem actually went through very few revisions, mostly based on the feedback that I got about practicing restraint and “letting the images breathe.” That mostly involved trimming and tightening lines, and utilizing spacing and lineation.
What would you like for readers to get out of this poem?
I don’t think I ever intend or want readers to get anything out of my poems. I think what I try to convey in this poem—alienation, a sense of displacement, a longing for something you are no longer sure you ever really had—are all things that can resonate with people. If a reader finds one thing that they can take away from the poem and leave the rest, I think the poem has already accomplished its purpose.
What topics and/or themes do you tend to return to in your work?
Sickness, family, generational trauma, language. I also have an affinity for scientific elements in poetry.
Are you primarily a poet, or have you written in other forms as well?
I tell people that I write poetry because I don’t talk to people enough to know what realistic dialogues sound like. I took a class with Professor Törzs called Time is of the Essence in Fall 2020 and that class really challenged me to write short stories which is a medium I’m significantly less comfortable with.
What was the submitting process like for Adroit?
A professor told me about the prize the year before and I also submitted but wasn’t chosen. Last year I wrote a lot more new poems and when submission rolled around I thought “hey, I can apply for a fee waiver so why not.”
How did you react when you heard that you were a finalist, and that you would be published in the journal?
I was at work so I just sat at my computer and said, “Oh cool.”
How did your loved ones react to the news?
I called my friend to share the news and she isn’t a big poetry reader at all but she kept yelling on the phone that I should be more excited, so I already have a fan.
Now Ngoc has more fans here at The Words! We thank them for taking the time to answer our questions.