Time is a Mother

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

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

A profound and accomplished collection

Dazed Digital, *Books to Look Out For 2022*

There's something about Vuong's writing that demands all of your lungs. The succinct line arrangement and absence of full stops in poems

Observer

An indispensable collection

ArtReview

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 the Year*

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

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

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*

Vuong writes with such a sensitive scrutiny, breathtaking in its expression

Financial Times, *Books of the Year*

A gorgeous, moving and awe-inspiring gathering of poems that feel like award-winning short films. These vignettes of loss, grief and love will take your breath away

Skinny, *Books of the Year*

Ocean Vuong, one of my favourite contemporary poets, expanded his body of work beautifully in Time Is a Mother

Observer

Heartbreaking and perfect

White Review, *Books of the Year*

An incredibly impactful collection, there's no doubt Time Is A Mother will strike a chord with most

Gay Times, *Books of the Year*

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

Through these poems, Vuong sings loud and clear of everything worth living for and discovering - just as vividly as he did in his critically acclaimed titles On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Night Sky With Exit Wounds

NPR

Haunting, inconsolable, and at the same time a playful, generous in spirit, tender, inimitable book. The poet’s late mother is these pages’ muse and guardian spirit, as poem after poem Vuong redefines our idea of what an elegy can do it, what it is for. But from all of this intersection of tragedy and tenderness, true wisdom comes: Vuong teaches us not just how to grieve, but how to live

Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic