Press release: Wake up!
Wake up! to death and life.
Refugee doctor self-publishes first in a series of free poetry chapbooks to wake people up, to ask the profound questions.
The first is Lights out & other poems – Wake up! series Vol. 1
Norwich – July 26, 2008 –
Vietnamese poet Phuoc-Tan Diep has released a free e-Book of poems to disturb us and move us to thinking about the questions that matter. His desire to wake people up has led him to write poetry centred on the important topics in life, exploring those places that all of us find difficult to face.
The panel of judges of The Hamish Canham Poetry Prize 2008 said this regarding one of the included poems:
“We had great trouble choosing between the last two poems. Phuoc-Tan Diep’s ‘Portrait of Death as an Artist’ is a powerful evocation of the aftermath of war. Through the metaphor of Death as a painter, we are invited to reflect on how, even long afterwards, the melancholy aesthetics of death persist. Through still and spare language, the pathos and loss of war are wonderfully evoked.”
Dr Diep is a Vietnamese ‘boat person’. After his family arrived in the UK in 1978 he has chosen to live life, and succeeded in becoming a doctor. He is thankful for every day; many of his fellow refugees died. This series is an expression of his thanks and his passion to wake others up to be similarly thankful.
The e-Book is a collection of 17 poems of varying forms: free verse, prose poems, haiku, tanka and some experimental – including an invented form: the cleave poem. Inevitably some deal with death and war. The majority have been published in the UK or in the USA.
Dr Diep says: “I want to wake people up! There are more important questions than what’s on TV tonight. We threw it out and now talk about life and death, about love and sacrifice, about war and freedom. Then we seek some answers to the questions that arise – before life ends.”
Dr Phuoc-Tan Diep is 33 years old and has a pregnant wife and a 2 year old daughter.
Lights out & other poems – Wake up! series Vol. 1 can be found at memoware.
