Paul Tran
“When I first started writing this book, that question, “Why do people do what they do to others?” animated so much of my curiosity, but I learned the hard way that I can’t actually presume what’s in the heart of another. I can only map my own interiority onto the page.”
“Tran’s debut demonstrates the capacity of poetry to tell the truths which will set you free.”
“This much-anticipated debut from Tran investigates American imperialism, sexual assault, intergenerational trauma, and the complexities of trauma recovery . . . the poems here relating these stories are breathtaking, thought-provoking, and fearlessly honest, encapsulating tumultuous lows that will make readers shudder . . . [While] pain is vividly captured, there is also an undercurrent of strength and perseverance within the voices . . . Readers will be sure to find connection and refuge within Tran’s standout collection. Highly recommended.”
“[Tran] tell[s] hard truths with clarity while exploring the legacy of American imperialism and the effects of sexual violence on the body, mind, and imagination . . . Tran’s poems are curious and searching, especially as they wrestle with the contradictions of trauma recovery . . . These poems embody a spirit of inquiry in their forms, too, many of which are Tran’s own. Each provides a unique doorway into the subject matter . . . These searingly honest, beautifully told depictions of survival and self-love will move and challenge readers.”
“[S]tunning . . . Formally inventive, Tran includes a series of persona poems written from the perspective of cadavers used in sixteenth-century anatomical studies, some whose skin was supposedly used to bind books. They also introduce a new form, the hydra, which seeks to ‘resist as much as possible the psychological impulse to reach for closure and certitude.’ A darkly intelligent and exquisite debut.”
Paul Tran is the author of the debut poetry collection, All the Flowers Kneeling, (Penguin Poetry, 2022). A recipient of the Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and a Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize, their work appears in The New Yorker, The Nation, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere.
For their writing and teaching, Paul has received support from Kundiman, Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, Poets House, Lambda Literary Foundation, Napa Valley Writers Conference, the Home School, Vermont Studio Center, the Conversation Literary Festival, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Miami Writers Institute, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, the Eliza So Fellowship (from Submittable, Plympton, and the Writer’s Block), Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Diasporic Vietnamese Artist Network & Djerrasi Artist Residency, the Soze Foundation, the Luminary & Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
From 2013-18, Paul coached the poetry slam teams at Brown University, Barnard College & Columbia University, and Washington University in St. Louis. Paul was the first Asian American since 1993—and first transgender poet ever—to win the Nuyorican Poets Café Grand Slam, placing top 10 at the Individual World Poetry Slam and top 2 at the National Poetry Slam. A two-time winner of the Rustbelt Poetry Slam, Paul has served as Poet-in-Residence at Urban Word NYC and head poetry slam coach at Urban Arts Alliance in St. Louis, which won the Brave New Voices Grand Slam Championship in 2019.
In an interview, Paul was asked about the process of poetic investigation. They responded, “Always I aim to be clear, with myself and others, particularly with students, that discovery through investigation isn’t synonymous with conclusion. It’s certainly not certitude. It’s not closure. Often I find that my poems lead to more questions, more poems, and it’s therefore the cultivation of stamina for relentless investigation, poem after poem, that defines the charge and labor of being, for me, a poet.”
Paul earned their B.A. in history from Brown University and M.F.A. in poetry from Washington University in St. Louis, where they won the Howard Nemerov Prize, Dorothy Negri Prize, and Norma Lowry Memorial Award. As the Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow and Senior Poetry Fellow in the Writing Program, and as Faculty in Poetry in the Summer Writers Institute, Paul has taught the introductory, intermediate, and advanced poetry workshops at WashU. Paul has also taught at Pacific University MFA in Writing and Stanford University, where they were a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry. Paul is currently Poetry Editor at The Offing Magazine, which won a Whiting Literary Magazine Prize from the Whiting Foundation, and an Assistant Professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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