Media Contacts:

John Balaban, 919/515-4167 or tbalaban@earthlink.net
Mick Kulikowski, NC State News Services, 919/515-8387 or mick_kulikowski@ncsu.edu

December 1, 2000

New Poetry Translation Spurs Movement to Preserve Vietnamese Script

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

John Balaban, poet-in-residence and professor of English at North Carolina State University, is performing a rescue effort.

Balaban's critically acclaimed new book of translated poetry, Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong, takes a giant step toward introducing Western readers to the spare yet sensual verses of one of Asia's masters, and saving an ancient system of writing that is close to extinction. The book has garnered glowing reviews from literary critics and historians. President Bill Clinton cited it during his recent state visit to Vietnam.

Ho Xuan Huong lived two hundred years ago in Vietnam. She wrote her poems in Nom, a system of writing which borrows characters from Chinese but alters them to convey uniquely Vietnamese meanings.

Balaban learned of Huong in the 1960s, during his time in Vietnam as a conscientious objector performing nonmilitary service as war raged. Though some of her poems lean toward erotic, Huong also used metaphor to portray Vietnam's male-dominated society, where women were expected to be submissive.

"The fact that she stood out immediately in her own time and has never lost popularity in her homeland makes her a very important figure," Balaban said. "And the fact that she's a woman writing as she does about the things she does just makes her all the more remarkable." Spring Essence is published in three writing systems -- English, modern Vietnamese and the original Nom that is known to only a few dozen people around the world. The book is the result of years of painstaking translating and rigorous trans-Pacific literary research by Balaban. It marks the first time Nom has come off a printing press. Until now, it was reproduced only by hand, by using woodblock type, or by xerographic copies.

Balaban hopes his book will help accomplish several goals: the creation of a Nom dictionary; the translation of more works in Nom: the creation of a bibliographic service to world libraries which cannot identify their world holdings because Nom has never before been printed; and the publication of Nom research. Working with collaborators Ngo Thanh Nhan and James Do, he is now putting together the Vietnamese Nom Preservation Foundation, a non-profit organization that will be entrusted to work toward meeting these goals.

The importance of Balaban's book was noted by President Bill Clinton, who referred to Spring Essence during his recent visit to Vietnam. In discussing the ways globalization has brought Vietnam to the world and the world to Vietnam, Clinton said, "The 200-year-old poems of Ho Xuan Huong are published in America -- in English, Vietnamese and even in the original Nom, the first time ancient Vietnamese has come off a printing press."

In addition to drawing rave reviews nationwide, Balaban's efforts to save the Vietnamese script and allow Western readers access to Huong’s critically acclaimed poetry are also drawing attention to the revitalized Creative Writing Program at NC State.

Though the program has existed for three decades, its fires are currently being rekindled, Balaban says, as faculty members and students push each other to new heights of scholarship and creativity. A renewed emphasis on public outreach has been a big part of the revitalization, he says.

This year, the Creative Writing Program is sponsoring a series of free, public festivals and literary readings. These include its annual Readers and Writers Marathon, a 12-hour-long read-a-thon that raises money for the Wake Literacy Council; the Owen-Walters Reading Series, which is bringing six well-known writers (including Pulitzer Prize winner Carolyn Kizer and National Book Award winner John Barth) to campus; and a poetry festival of African-American literature and culture which will include readings from the acclaimed Jamaican poet Opal Adisa.

Balaban is the author of 10 books or poetry and prose, including four volumes which together have won The Academy of American Poets' Lamont prize, a National Poetry Series Selection, and two nominations for the National Book Award. He has written extensively on Vietnam. His Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems won the 1998 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.

--kulikowski--

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