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Wednesday, June 13, 2012

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PM-LEFT-HIS-DAUGHTER--Brighton










I rack my brain but can't remember the name of the Kemptown pub where I took this photo. Breaded lamb strips and Thai spring rolls were advertised. In any case, the barmaid, in her early 30's, was very friendly. She told me she studied sociology in college, and was a native of Portmouth, famous for the 6.57 crew. She complained about the increase of overweight people in the UK, "People used to do all kinds of outdoor activities, but now they mostly stay indoors." I reassured her the obesity problem in England was nothing compared to the US. Her parents had a 12-week holiday in Virginia, and that's where she was conceived, so she has been to the States, sort of. Her mom loved Virginia and didn't want to come back. The barmaid said "hon" so much, one might think she was from Baltimore.

She said people would come in to leave a CV, hoping to be hired as a bartender, whereas in the past, they didn't need a resume for such a job.


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About Me

I was born in Vietnam in 1963, came to the U.S. in 1975, and have also lived in Italy and England. I'm the author of two collections of stories, Fake House (2000) and Blood and Soap (2004), five books of poems, All Around What Empties Out (2003), American Tatts (2005), Borderless Bodies (2006), Jam Alerts (2007) and Some Kind of Cheese Orgy (2009), and a novel, Love Like Hate (2010). My work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, 2004, 2007 and Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, among many other places. I'm also the editor of the anthologies Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (1996) and Three Vietnamese Poets (2001), and translator of Night, Fish and Charlie Parker, the poetry of Phan Nhien Hao (2006). Blood and Soap was chosen by the Village Voice as one of the best books of 2004. My poems, stories and political writing have been translated into Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Icelandic and Finnish, and I've been invited to read my works in London, Cambridge, Brighton, Paris, Berlin, Reykjavik, Toronto and all over the U.S. I've also published widely in Vietnamese.