Young Vietnamese Poet Refuses Award

Posted on October 27, 2006

We ran across this intriguing little story about a young Vietnamese poet who has refused to accept an award from the Vietnam Writers' Association.

Just a few days after the Vietnam Writers' Association announced the awards for 2006, Ly Hoang Ly, a young Vietnamese poet, sent a letter of refusal to the association. The Vietnam Writers' Association awards are the most prestigious ones in the country for written works. This year, the fiction award was given to the book "Boundless rice field" by Nguyen Ngoc Tu, a young writer from the south, while the award for poems was given to poet Huu Thinh, chairman of the association.
Thinh has won the award several times. In her letter to the association, Ly wrote that she thought that the judgement did not sound serious enough. She also said that candidates running for the awards were disrespected.
This is not the first time an award from the Vietnam Writers' Association has been refused. Previously, renowned Vietnamese author Ho Anh Thai declined the award given to him for his novel. Ly Hoang Ly was born in 1975. She is a poet, artist and has had many exhibitions of installation launched in Vietnam as well as in other countries. Lo Lo is her second volume of poems; it was first published in 2005. Her previous one, Co trang (White grass), won the Yellow Apricot award given by Nguoi Lao Dong Newspaper.

Perhaps something got lost in the English translation, but we are at a loss to understand what the controversy is about. If the award is so prestigious, why did another famous poet reject his? Is it some kind of political statement? Is it because the Chairman of the organization keeps winning the prizes? It's all most confusing.