In Person at Beyond Baroque

The Poet’s Memoir is a generative workshop that approaches the narratives of the self through short, non-narrative inquiries. A memoir does not have to tell a life from beginning to end. It can be made of moments, snippets, fragments—parts of a story that, when brought together, begin to make a whole. In this workshop, we will write toward discovery rather than completion. The hope is to find a path through: to plant seeds, follow what emerges, and see what might grow. Through a series of short generative exercises, participants will begin gathering the pieces of a larger story—the story of one’s life.

Truong Tran is a poet, visual artist, and teacher born in Saigon, Vietnam. His book-length poetry project Book of the Other: Small in Comparison (2021) received an American Book Award in 2022. He is the author of seven other collections, The Book of Perceptions, Placing the Accents, Dust and Conscience, Within the Margins, Four Letter Words, 100 words (with Damon Potter), and Looking and Seeing/Seeing and Looking (with Damon Potter). He has also written the children's book Going Home Coming Home and an artist monograph, I Meant To Say Please Past the Sugar. His poems and books have been translated into Spanish, French, and Dutch. He is the recipient of the Poetry Center Prize, the Fund for Poetry Grant, the California Arts Council Grant, and numerous San Francisco Arts Commission Grants. Truong is also a visual artist who believes that art, be it poetry, cooking, sculpting, and even gardening, are his ways of thinking through the conscious of the times we live in. Truong lives in San Francisco and currently teaches at Northeastern University, Oakland.