By Yong Shu Hoong

Perhaps the book, Tango, Tangoing: Poems & Art, best sums up the multiple interests in life that Mong-Lan enjoys: poetry, visual arts and, of course, dance. Published in 2008, it features her poetry, accompanied by her fluid and sensual drawings of tango dancers. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, she left her country with her family on the last day of Saigon's evacuation in 1975. She grew up in Houston, Texas, where she studied at the Glassell School of Art. She later graduated from the University of Arizona with a Master of Fine Arts. For two years, she was a Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University. Mong-Lan has also lived in cities like Tokyo and Bangkok. Currently she divides her time between the United States and Argentina, and travels sometimes to Asia and Europe. As a poet, she has won a Pushcart Prize, the Juniper Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association's New Writers Awards for Poetry, among other awards. Her poetry has also been nationally and internationally anthologised in publications such as Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Book of Poetry: Best Poems from 30 Years of the Pushcart Prize. Mong-Lan is the author of eight books and chapbooks, which include Song of the Cicadas (2001), Why is the Edge Always Windy? (2005) and One Thousand Minds Brimming (2014). She is also a photographer, composer, multi-instrumentalist and singer, as well as a dancer and teacher of Argentine tango.

1. What are you reading right now?
The Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik; the Uruguayan poet Daniel Morena; Jorge Luis Borges; and Gandhi: An Autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

2. If you were a famous literary character in a novel, play, or poem, who would you be, and why?
I would want to be speaker of the Divine Comedy, to be Dante himself, reciting, creating such beautiful Italian verses, to be immersed in such sonorous beauty.

3. What is the greatest misconception about you?
I think it is that I want to conquer the world with the various arts. No, that is furthest from the case. I just hope to continue making contributions in the various artistic disciplines until I die, unifying the arts in the ways that I can, with interdisciplinary practices and presentations. Just humbly making my contributions to the world.

4. Name one living author and one dead author you identify with most, and tell us why.
I don't know about "identify", but one writer I admire, amongst many, would be Maxine Hong Kingston, for having written the book that was so important for me to read while growing up: The Woman Warrior. Again, so many, but another would be Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, author of the 1982 novel, Dictee. Her writing is experimental and fierce, and uses elements of cinematography.

5. Do you believe in writer's block? If so, how do you overcome it?
Working at the writing, chiselling at the stone, much as a sculptor would, every day. Writer's block most often comes from a sense of perfectionism, which paralyses you. If you understand that you can write and make mistakes, and improve on the mistakes, then you no longer have writer's block. The ideas and words come as you work and write.

6. What qualities do you admire most in a writer?
Persistence, self-belief, discipline, writing for writing's sake…

7. What is one trait you deplore most in writing or writers?
Not being self-critical enough, lack of editing, posing.

8. Can you recite your favourite line from a literary work or a piece of advice from a writer?
"Writing – and in this I disagree with everybody – must teach men soberness: to be awake. [Spoken in English.] To make people sober. It does not mean, not to try. But with a small internal correction. I reject optimism despite all the theologians. Despair is a fruitful feeling. It is a cleanser, from desire, from hope. 'Hope is the mother of the stupid.' [This is a Polish proverb.] I don't like hope. This system will fall apart. It might last 20 to 30 years longer. I am there, not to bear it! A despairing soldier fights better…" – Zbigniew Herbert

9. Complete this sentence: Few people know this, but I...
am working on 20 poems at the same time, finishing a novel, playing and composing music… and choreographing dances in my mind…

10. At the movies, if you have to pick a comedy, a tragedy, or an action thriller to watch, which will you go for, and why?
I would go for great comedy or great tragedy, nothing less than greatness. Action thrillers are actually pretty boring.

11. What is your favourite word, and what is your least favourite one?
So many words! One of my favourite words in English: splendour. Least favourite word: don't know really… shit?

12. Write a rhyming couplet that includes the following three words: veer, draw, tango.

to tango and draw eternity at the stake
leads one to veer right and see what is fake

13. What object is indispensable to you when you write?
I was going to say the clock, but I really think it's my computer.

14. What is the best time of the day for writing?
Afternoon, evening, or night or early morning. Anytime that the mind is clear and ready for work.

15. If you had a last supper, which three literary figures, real or fictional, would you invite to the soiree, and why?
Marguerite Duras, Marcel Proust, of course, my adolescent hero, and Jorge Luis Borges – just to hear them talk about everything.

16. Now that you're living elsewhere, how often do you still dream or think of Vietnam?
I'm writing a novel about Vietnam and immigration, and I sing in Vietnamese. People would be surprised to know that I think about Vietnam every day. I have family in Hanoi as well as Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), an aunt, an uncle, lots of cousins and their children.

I would like to think that the country is evolving, certainly economically, in leaps and bounds, after opening itself to outside investments and international business years ago. With regards to writing and civil liberties, it seems that writers are being censored everywhere in the world, and liberties are being curtailed. When I was last in Vietnam in 2007, giving lectures at universities in Saigon and the Mekong Delta, I did speak to writers, and it seemed that they have to be very careful about what they say with regards to politics, in particular against the government there, or face dire consequences such as imprisonment. In 2003, when I was there on a Fulbright, I was told by writer friends that if three writers get together to give a reading, it was considered a revolution and the police might come. These are writers not in the official writers and poets associations. Just recently, in 2015, I read that the second Asia Pacific Poetry Festival took place in Hanoi – I assume that the Vietnamese writers invited take the official position, but that's a start to international dialogue.

17. What would you write on your own tombstone?
I wouldn't have a tombstone, as I would probably be cremated, but if I were to have a tombstone, it would probably be "Multi-artist, Eternally Dancing."

_____