Paul Tran

Sometimes, reading a poet for the first time is like meeting a person: the first impression is defining. That is what Paul Tran's debut is like. A queer, transgender Vietnamese American - such labelling scarcely serves as an introduction - their presence on the page is instantly dramatic: there is a gorgeous sensuality to the writing but a reason for readers to stay alert, to be on guard . . . there is a momentum, a thespian verve that does not mask the work's integrity. There is courage in their ongoing confrontation with pain . . . superb and ungovernable . . . [with a] shimmering tension . . . [an] unforgettable collection

Beautiful, sensuous and plural . . . Paul Tran has written a vital and visceral collection. Breathtaking

Brave . . . The pendulum between resistance and repetition in trauma both personal and historical moves throughout this striking collection, which is full of mirrors, pictures, paintings and retold myths, as though trying to articulate the unspeakable from various angles . . . Though often nightmarish and dark, there are flashes of abandon, starlight, and moments of shimmering release that extend from costume to cosmos, so that by the end the speaker is running 'naked but for my snakeskin coat / so fast through wind I become the wind' . . . an auspicious debut

Every so often, a true masterwork seemingly springs forth fully formed as if the goddess Athena, armor flashing and sword raised . . . All the Flowers Kneeling arrived ready for war . . . an exquisitely crafted labyrinth of a book

A testament to queer self-love . . . a monument to [what] persists

Vivid . . . searingly honest, beautifully told depictions of survival and self-love

[A] powerful debut . . . marshals narrative lyrics and stark beauty

Paul Tran's debut collection of poems is indelible, this remarkable voice transforming itself as you read, eventually transforming you. I felt at times a passenger, a ghost, implicated, consumed, and ultimately delivered back to myself, renewed

author of HOW TO WRITE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL

Between grief and love, past and future, trauma and luminous survival, these are searching, generous poems that enact the resilience of the human spirit, how the art of language-making - story, truth-telling - allows us not only to survive but thrive. This is a stunning debut

An elegant meditation on many things - history, inheritance, language, trauma, how the self tricks the self, defiance . . . All the Flowers Kneeling maps the journey past bewilderment, to knowing, to, finally, the mystery of unknowing, where . . . the life we get to choose for ourselves begins

Ravishing . . . Formally inventive, psychologically acute . . . Tran's debut demonstrates the capacity of poetry to tell the truths which will set you free

All the Flowers Kneeling is a gorgeous debut . . . Out of violences intimate and imperial, out of survival and self-fashioning, Paul Tran sculpts new forms to contain all. This book is a richness. What a stellar poet for our day

This is a book about survival. 
This is a book about love. 
 
Visceral and astonishing, Paul Tran's debut poetry collection, All the Flowers Kneeling, charts the rebuilding of a self in the wake of extremity. How, it asks, can we reimagine what we have been given in order to make something new: an identity, a family, a life, a dream? 
 
These rich, resonant poems of desire, freedom, control and rebirth reach back into the past - the tale of Scheherazade, US imperial violence, a shattering history of personal abuse - to show how it both scars and transforms. Innovative poetic forms mirror the nonlinear experiences of trauma survivors, while ambitious sequences probe our systems of knowledge-making and the power of storytelling as survival. 
 
At once virtuosic and vulnerable, confessional and profoundly defiant, All the Flowers Kneeling revels in rediscovering and reconfiguring the self, and ultimately becomes an essential testament to the human capacities for resilience, endurance and love.

Paul Tran

Praise for All the Flowers Kneeling

Sometimes, reading a poet for the first time is like meeting a person: the first impression is defining. That is what Paul Tran's debut is like. A queer, transgender Vietnamese American - such labelling scarc ...

Beautiful, sensuous and plural . . . Paul Tran has written a vital and visceral collection. Breathtaking

Brave . . . The pendulum between resistance and repetition in trauma both personal and historical moves throughout this striking collection, which is full of mirrors, pictures, paintings and retold myt ...

Sometimes, reading a poet for the first time is like meeting a person: the first impression is defining. That is what Paul Tran's debut is like. A queer, transgender Vietnamese American - such labelling scarc ...

Beautiful, sensuous and plural . . . Paul Tran has written a vital and visceral collection. Breathtaking

Brave . . . The pendulum between resistance and repetition in trauma both personal and historical moves throughout this striking collection, which is full of mirrors, pictures, paintings and retold myt ...

Sometimes, reading a poet for the first time is like meeting a person: the first impression is defining. That is what Paul Tran's debut is like. A queer, transgender Vietnamese American - such labelling scarc ...

Beautiful, sensuous and plural . . . Paul Tran has written a vital and visceral collection. Breathtaking

Brave . . . The pendulum between resistance and repetition in trauma both personal and historical moves throughout this striking collection, which is full of mirrors, pictures, paintings and retold myt ...

Videos

How Poetry Works with Paul Tran

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter