Late poetess Xuan Quynh.

VietNamNet Bridge – A collection of 32 poems by late poetess Xuan Quynh (1942-1988) has been published in Vietnamese and French.

The collection comprises Quynh’s first and last poems and her most popular works like Boat and the Sea, Wave, Love Poem in late Autumn, Self-singing, etc.

The poems were translated into French by Nguyen Minh Phuong, an employee of a French firm in Vietnam. Phuong was the top laureate graduate of the French Faculty, the Hanoi English Teacher Training University in 1994.

Phuong said: “I love French and I see many French people interested in Vietnamese literature. My French friends used to ask me to translate a Vietnamese poem or a song into French. I gradually came to like this job. Before translating Xuan Quynh’s poems into French, I translated poems by other poets for the Le Courrier du Vietnam magazine, for example Nguyen Duy, Phan Thi Thanh Nhan, Doan Thi Lam Luyen, Truong Nam Huong, Do Trung Lai, Huy Can, Te Hanh, Nguyen Binh and Ho Dzenh.”

She started translating Xuan Quynh’s works in late 2009, for the Le Courrier du Vietnam. She said it was very difficult to select Quynh’s poems for translation because all of them are very good. Therefore, Phuong decided to have a collection of Xuan Quynh’s works. If Tomorrow (Si Demain…) collection is the result.

Edited by two French and one Vietnamese, 500 copies of If Tomorrow have been released,  200 of them in France.

PV