“Love for a stranger:” A conversation with Kaitlin Rees & Nhã Thuyên

In September 2016, Tongue editor Colin Cheney had the chance to attend the A-Festival in Vietnam, organized by the editors of AJAR Press. While there, he interviewed the organizers of the festival: Vietnamese poet Nhã Thuyên, and American poet and translator Kaitlin Rees.

This conversation at Blue Bird Nest Coffee in Hanoi ranged from discussions of feminism in Vietnamese literature to how to define “contemporary” poetics to the joys and consequences of a close relationship between poet and translator. We’ll also hear a reading—in their original Vietnamese and as English translation—of two of Nhã Thuyên’s poems currently featured in Issue 4.