Green Rice: Poems by Lam Thi My Da

When Washington Post columnist Edward Hirsch reprinted Lâm Thị Mỹ Dạ's "Garden Fragrance" and "Night Harvest" (from Six Vietnamese Poets), he gave special praise to the simultaneous clarity and complexity of Dạ's poetry. Now, for the first time in English, readers can enjoy a full, bilingual volume of her selected work. While many of her poems deal with her experiences during the Vietnam War, they are grounded in her intimate involvement with the landscape, flora, and fauna of her country, and explore love, motherhood, women's issues, and the sometimes difficult movement into middle age.

Born in 1949 in the south central part of Viet Nam, Lâm Thị Mỹ Dạ​ spent the war in Quang Binh province, near the scene of much heavy fighting. Author of five books of poetry in Vietnamese, she is widely recognized as one of Vietnam's major poets. She is the recipient of two awards from the Vietnamese Writers’ Association and the highest honors from the National United Board of Vietnamese Literature and the Arts. She lives in Vietnam.

Martha Collins is an American poet and translator. She is an editor-at-large for FIELD magazine and one of the editors of the Oberlin College Press. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Thuy Dinh is a writer and translator who has written in both English and Vietnamese.