9TH ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 21:: Anthony McPherson on Paul Tran
When Paul Tran came to New York, the bricks at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe turned neon. All the poets, myself included, were inspired to put as much craft into their aesthetic and performative choices as they were to improve their writing.
If you see something beautiful in nature, like a peacock spider spreading its “feathers,” or a frog wearing a butterfly as a hat, a poem may come to mind, but so does Paul. Many great writers have absolute control over the page, but few have equal mastery over their voice, tone, and body. But under all of that booming genius and beauty is the courage to write and recite a laser-focused truth that causes so many other voices to quake and waver.
Tran moved from San Diego to study in Rhode Island, then hit New York like an asteroid made entirely of light. It was hard to see my friend leave for St. Louis, but since the reason was to become a writing fellow at the University of Washington, I couldn’t be too sad. But as Paul moves, so does poetry.
Few others have pushed the artform’s boundaries and carved out new paths for budding artists the way this Vietnamese-American poet has. Paul exemplifies the fearlessness of fostering heartfelt connections without letting them tether you down. The lesson: your roots are ethereal. Write like the wind.
McPherson is a poet, slam champion, viral content creator, Ars Poetica’s Director of Talent + Training, and a hundred souls in one biracial body.
Paul Tran is an Vietnamese-American poet, activist and historian. Paul Tran is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from Poetry Magazine & the Poetry Foundation and a “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize. Their work appears in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, Good Morning America, NYLON, and elsewhere, including the RZA-directed movie Love Beats Rhymes (Lionsgate) alongside Azealia Banks, Common, and Jill Scott.
They earned a B.A. in twentieth century United States history from Brown University and an M.F.A. in poetry from Washington University in St. Louis, where they won the Howard Nemerov Prize, Dorothy Negri Prize, and Norma Lowry Memorial Award. As the Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow and Senior Poetry Fellow in The Writing Program, Paul has taught the introduction to poetry and intermediate poetry undergraduate workshops.
