Time is a Mother
- Author Ocean Vuong
- Narrator Ocean Vuong
- Publisher Random House
- Run Time 1 hour and 44 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Coping with death and bereavement, Migration, immigration and emigration, Modern and contemporary poetry (c 1900 onwards), Narrative theme: Displacement, exile, migration, Poetry by individual poets, Sociology: family and relationships.
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Listen to a sample
What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
How else do we return to ourselves but to fold
The page so it points to the good part
In 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. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong's poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicentre of the break.
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. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. 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.
© Ocean Vuong 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022
Critics Review
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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.
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
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