Poet Hoang Viet Hang: "Sewing silence alone"

That woman is poet Hoang Viet Hang.

Poet Hoang Viet Hang.

Write diligently like a weaver

Born in 1953 in Van Ho village ( Hanoi ), Hoang Viet Hang started writing poetry at the age of 12-13. As the only child in the family, she soon turned to writing as a way to share her teenage feelings. Her first poems were carefully handwritten on stained school papers - her silent companion throughout her teenage years. Then life took a turn. She became a worker at Construction Corporation No. 1.

Although working in a dry environment, her writings are still her spiritual refuge. The company created conditions for her to study at Hanoi University of Culture. After graduating, she returned to her unit and worked for 19 years in propaganda and reward work.

The turning point came in 1974, when she attended the Writing Training Class of the Vietnam Writers Association in Quang Ba. From then on, Hoang Viet Hang devoted herself more to literature. In 1980, her short story collection “Unfinished Words” won the Hanoi Writers Association Award as the first recognition for a quiet but powerful writer.

Sticking together and building a home with writer Trieu Bon, Hoang Viet Hang gradually withdrew to become a housewife, taking care of her husband and children. Her husband, writer Trieu Bon, after returning to Hanoi from the battlefield of Route 9 - Khe Sanh and the B2 front and working at the Army Literature Magazine, still carried many wounds, was always sick, and at one point was paralyzed on one side. Quietly and persistently, she took care of her family, studied journalism, and then started her career in journalism in 1993.

Becoming a reporter for the Tourism newspaper, Hoang Viet Hang had the opportunity to travel all over the country, then attend international poetry festivals, and set foot in many countries around the world . From a woman who was stuck in the kitchen, she gradually became a person who loved to travel - up the mountains and down the sea, crossing many borders. And the more she traveled, the more she realized a simple thing, there is no place more beautiful than Vietnam.

Walking, reading, and writing - that is the parallel journey in Hoang Viet Hang's life. She kept in mind the advice of writer To Hoai: "Write diligently like a weaver. If you sit at the loom every day, you will weave beautifully and have beautiful squares of fabric." Even on days when she was sick and had a fever, when she did not have a computer, she still tried to write at least one A4 page every day. "I think literary work must be serious and diligent, must be responsible, must write carefully and deeply" - she once said.

On her creative journey, Hoang Viet Hang witnessed many lonely and disadvantaged people - especially in remote and coastal areas. It was they, with their hardship and resilience, who inspired her to overcome life's upheavals. In 1981, when she arrived at Ca Mau Cape, listening to the confidences of a fisherman, she wrote the poem "On the cape at the end of the sky" - a profound poem about the land at the end of the Fatherland: "Boats drift downstream / The sound of the horn still blows / On the cape at the end of the sky / The green mangrove forest slopes... If only I could hold / That cape in my heart..." .

Her poems are not only for sharing, but sometimes also for supporting a life. One time, in the middle of the night, she received a phone call from a strange woman. She sobbed, saying that it took her a long time to get the phone number of the author of the poem “Sewing alone the silence”. She said that thanks to that poem, she had more will to live when she thought she was hopeless. That poem, Hoang Viet Hang wrote in 2003 - after her husband, poet Trieu Bon, had just passed away.

That six-eight poem is a deep, sorrowful confession: "Sewing alone in silence/ Shirt without patch or needle and thread/ I sew fallen leaves like embroidery/ Sewing bitterness with a smiling irony..." ... "One morning, the moon is bright and leisurely/ I sew alone the winters of my life" .

For her, poetry does not make money, nor gold nor diamonds, but it can touch the hearts of those in pain, making them see that life is still worth living. She still remembers a line of poetry by Luu Quang Vu: "Like rays of sunlight, we will not last forever / Poems that no one will read again" . After many years of writing, living and dying with literature, the only thing she hopes for is to have a few lines of poetry anchored in the hearts of readers.

Poetry distilled from life's sorrows

In 2019, at the age of 66, poet Hoang Viet Hang released the poetry collection “I burned the love poems you gave me”. The name of the book is also the title of a poem in it, opening with regretful lines: “So I burned all the love poems/ you gave me the age of twenty broken moons/ the verses of poetry looking at the ashes, holding my breath/ knowing a few lines of six-eight verse, hiding in my heart...” .

She explained: “When I was young, I had many friends. Some of them wrote poems for me. My husband is also a writer and also writes poems. I secretly thought that to keep my happiness and my family, it would be best to burn those poems that were given to me, not keep anything. For me, family always comes first. I stopped writing for 17 years to take care of my husband and children. But then fate made me pick up the pen again. And I recorded the memories of those letters. Through this poem, I want to tell young people that generosity is very necessary in love, because everyone can have moments outside of their husbands and wives. What belongs to the past, let's put it aside. The important thing is that husband and wife still belong to each other, still understand each other.”

When the writer's heart has been distilled by time with love and compassion, age is no longer a barrier to creativity, nor does it make the poems become old. In her old age, Hoang Viet Hang still writes about love, about journeys, about human fate with overflowing emotions and a new writing style. Her poetic voice is increasingly gentle, tender, rich in contemplation, distilled from life's experiences.

In particular, love and fate are the main themes throughout Hoang Viet Hang’s poetry. Reading her poems, one can clearly feel the compassionate thoughts, the hidden secrets of personal life, sometimes filled with tears. One of the most impressive poems is “The reason a lotus bows its head” with its uniqueness in both content and form.

She said she really liked listening to sad songs played by violinist Anh Tu. It was that melody that led to her emotions while writing the poem. From the image of two painters - a man painting lotus with widowed sadness, a female painter named Kim Bach specializing in painting haunting withered lotus flowers - Hoang Viet Hang distilled into moving verses: "There are two newly bloomed lotus flowers/ one lotus flower bows its head/ it seems like a lotus flower crying/ her lotus breast hides it/ can't see the color of tears/ the withered lotus falls into the brown mud/ the color, the color of that lotus/ how long will it be bright pink?/ enough to bring that fragrance to life/ wallowing in deep mud/ only one lotus flower bows its head/ it seems like a lotus flower crying/ the person in the withered flower is gone/ is the person's shadow lingering in the lotus/ the do paper and the dye know everything/ you use tears to paint me" ...

In 2023, with the support of the Vietnam Writers Association, Hoang Viet Hang published a collection of selected poems - 153 poems selected from thousands of poems written, crystallized from a journey of persistent and dedicated work. The book is nearly 300 pages thick - a memorable milestone in her writing career of more than half a century.

Five years later, within the framework of Vietnam Poetry Day 2025, people met Hoang Viet Hang again at a discussion. She was thinner, her voice was slower. She shared that her health was no longer good, but she still tried to write steadily, and was even planning to launch a novel. Time waits for no one, but in her eyes there was still a passionate love for literature - as if it were an indispensable part of the life of a woman who had experienced, loved, cried, and quietly sewed "the winter of her life" with verses of poetry.

Poet Hoang Viet Hang is from Van Ho village, Hanoi. She is a member of the Hanoi Writers Association and the Vietnam Writers Association. She has published 9 poetry collections and 13 prose collections (novels, short stories, essays) and has been awarded literary prizes by the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor, the Vietnam Union of Literature and Arts Associations, the Hanoi Writers Association, and the Vietnam Writers Association.

Source: https://hanoimoi.vn/nha-tho-hoang-viet-hang-mot-minh-khau-nhung-lang-im-705645.html