Barbara Tran’s entrancing poetry collection, Precedented Parrotting (Palimpsest Press, 2024), was a finalist for the Governor General Literary Award for Poetry. This beautiful book stands as an expansive debut that plumbs personal archives and traverses the natural world.
We are honoured to have Barbara join us for our Power Q & A series to speak with us about the visual impact of her work, which uses the whole stage of the page.
Welcome, Barbara!
Precedented Parrotting by Barbara Tran (Palimpsest Press, 2024)
Q: Your poems are striking in so many ways, and we’d like to focus on the visual form of your work in this collection, that seems to flit and burst, mimicking bird flight. We wonder if you could speak to us about the form of these poems. Was the form intentional? Or a natural expression of the themes addressed in your collection? Maybe a bit of both?
A: Thank you so much for this question. I absolutely love talking about form. It’s at the crux of most of my writing. If I can’t figure out the form, I usually cannot move forward with the piece.
I read poetry — and write most everything — out loud, meaning I have to speak the words as I’m writing them down or reading them. It rules out working in a coffeeshop.
But, the upside of writing out loud is it tells me when a poem’s form is “off.” If I walk away from my writing and come back when I don’t really recall the words and their rhythm, and I can’t tell how to read the thing based on how it allows itself to take up space on the page, I know the form is not working to its full potential. The form should tell me where and how long the pauses are. And where the emphases. Is there a moment of contemplation?
I come from a background where there was not much stability, so, for me, a solid left margin often feels like a lie. It’s not where I come from.
On page 33 of my book, the text falls to the lower right half of the page. At the top could have been blank white space. But when we look at a page of mostly white space and a little bit of text, our eyes automatically go directly to the text. They tend not to linger on the white space for very long before being tempted off, and what I wanted for this time/space before the text at the bottom of the page was for the reader to contemplate, to spend a moment considering what was missing. What photos would they put here? What text? Who? What was here has been silenced. Why?
Myself, I’m so exhausted, thinking about what is missing, that I can no longer bring myself to rise to the top of the page. I’m leaving the text here at the bottom.
On the facing page, 32, the text refers to the speaker’s beginning. (The speaker in the poem is both me and not me.) The ground shifts before the text even gets to the speaker’s birth. Then, her existence is shrouded in secrecy. There is no solid ground here. The lines shift around on the page to convey that.
They move though, with intention. There is an Easter egg hidden here for my enjoyment. I don’t expect any readers to get it, but it puts a smile on my face every time I see it. This is an origin story, and it’s shaped like the country of Vietnam.
More about Precedented Parrotting:
Opening with an exit, the poems in Precedented Parroting accept no assumptions. With the determination and curiosity of a problem-solving crow, this expansive debut plumbs personal archives and traverses the natural world, endeavouring to shake the tight cage of stereotypes, Asian and avian. Praised as “lively and intelligent” and “lyrically delicious,” Barbara Tran’s poetry offers us both the keen eye and grace of a hawk, “red-tailed gliding / on time.”
Poet Barbara Tran.
About Barbara Tran:
Born in New York City, Barbara Tran is an immigrant. And a settler. She writes in multiple genres. Her debut poetry book, Precedented Parroting, was a Finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award. Barbara’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in Conjunctions, The Malahat Review, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. Her poetry chapbook, In the Mynah Bird’s Own Words, was selected by Robert Wrigley, as the winner of Tupelo Press’s inaugural chapbook award. Barbara's writing has been longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize and nominated for two National Magazine Awards for short fiction. Barbara authored the titular character’s narration of Madame Pirate: Becoming a Legend, a short, virtual reality film, nominated for Best VR Story at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. She is currently at work in collaboration with Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn on the screenplay for Nguyễn's debut feature film.
A contributing co-editor of Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose, 25th Anniversary Edition, Barbara has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, MacDowell Freund Fellowship, and Bread Loaf Scholarship, as well as writing residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Hedgebrook, Lannan Foundation, and Millay Arts, amongst others. Barbara is a member of the AfroMundo collective and has contributed to collaborative hybrid projects by She Who Has No Master(s). She shares her home in Dish with One Spoon Territory with her partner, the economist Bob Gazzale, and their two adopted canines, Sprocket and River.