Time is a Mother

Discover the Sunday Times bestselling collection from the TikTok sensation and author of On Earth We're Briefly GorgeousDiscover the Sunday Times bestselling collection from the TikTok sensation and author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous'One of the most important poets of his generation'ANDREW MCMILLAN, author of Physical'Powerful'DUA LIPA'Redefines our idea of what an elegy can do it, what it is for'ILYA KAMINSKY, author of Deaf RepublicIn this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother's death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Vivid, brave and propulsive, Vuong's poems contend with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the value of joy in a perennially fractured American spirit.The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time is a Mother is a return and a forging-forth all at once.

“A remarkable return: Vuong's unparalleled luminosity of phrase, his perfected pinpoint accuracy of image is here placed alongside a thrilling expansion of voice and gaze which further confirms Vuong as one of the most important poets of his generation.”

Ocean Vuong, one of my favourite contemporary poets, expanded his body of work beautifully in Time Is a Mother. Observer
A remarkable return: Vuong's unparalleled luminosity of phrase, his perfected pinpoint accuracy of image is here placed alongside a thrilling expansion of voice and gaze which further confirms Vuong as one of the most important poets of his generation. -- Andrew McMillan, author of Physical
I read On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous while on tour and the language often stopped me in my tracks... This summer, I'll be packing his poetry collection... I'm looking forward to being still and having the space to read and reread his powerful words. -- Dua Lipa Guardian, Summer Books 2023
These 28 accomplished poems explore grief, trauma, family... Language itself, in all its power and violence, falls under Vuong's incomparable scrutiny. Financial Times, Summer Reads of 2022
Tender and heartbreaking ... Delving back into the visceral themes that made his 2019 novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous a revelation, Vuong traverses the intensely personal and the broadly political with grace and courage. TIME
There's something about Vuong's writing that demands all of your lungs. The succinct line arrangement and absence of full stops in poems... force you to breath heavy. Observer
Vuong's... poems passionately and inventively articulate the difficulties of understanding and accepting selfhood alongside the varieties of life beyond it. Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year
Not since Emily Dickinson has poetry found such an oceanic openness of the self's quiet laceration and cautious resilience. In Time Is A Mother Ocean Vuong's words are bullets travelling through the page and hitting us with debris resembling our memory of art, love, grief and acts of survival... We find ourselves being salvaged and released into a world where a word, a turn of phrase, or a line makes a difficult moment bearable. There is a violent process of fermentation in Vuong's poems that keeps poetry pungent, truth-seeking and unerasable. -- Kit Fan, author of Diamond Hill
Vuong writes... with such a sensitive scrutiny, breathtaking in its expression. Financial Times, Books of the Year
[A] stirring collection of poetry. [Vuong] experiments with language and form while probing the aftermath of his mother's death and his determination to survive it. Take your time with these poems, and return to them often. Washington Post

Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds and the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the 2019 MacArthur "Genius" Grant, he is also the winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have been featured in Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, Nation, New Republic, New Yorker, and the New York Times. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

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