Viet Nam News
HCM CITY — Dozens of writers and critics participate today in a poem reading in memory of the late revolutionary writers Nguyen Thi and Le Anh Xuan at the HCM City Union of Literature and Arts Associations.
Musician and singer Hoang Long, critic Ngo Thao and female poets Tran Mai Huong and Tram Huong read famous poems written by Thi and Xuan, both of them played a role in revolutionary literature.
Xuan’s Dang Dung Viet Nam (Posture of Viet Nam), a famous poem on Vietnamese liberation soldiers in the anti-American war, was read by his sister, Meritorious Artist Ca Le Hong. The work was turned into song by music professor Nguyen Chi Vu.
Talks on both writers were also conducted by their relatives and friends.
The event was part of the union’s cultural programmes to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Mau Than Offensive in Spring 1968.
“We want to highlight the life and revolutionary career of Thi and Xuan, who devoted their life to the Mau Than Offensive,” said Tran Van Tuan, chairman of the HCM City Writers’Association.
Xuan, whose real name is Ca Le Hien, was born in Ben Tre Province’s Mo Cay District, in 1940.
He moved to the north with his family in 1954, and later studied history at Ha Noi University.
He began writing in 1960 and joined the liberation forces to fight in the southern provinces between 1964 and 1968.
He is well-known for many of his poems and essays that praise soldiers’ fighting spirit and his passion for the country and its people.
His diary about events experienced during the war was published by the Viet Nam Writers’ Publishing House in 2011.
The work was found in a writer’s backpack after he was killed in action in a suburban area of Sai Gon, now HCM City, on May 24, 1968.
He received the State’s Prize for Literature and Arts, the highest prize of its kind in the country, in 2001.
Thi, whose real name is Nguyen Hoang Ca, was born in Nam Dinh Province in 1928. He joined the revolution when he was 17 years old.
He wrote many short stories, novels, poems and memoirs, most of which highlighted the Vietnamese people and soldiers in war.
His popular works, such as Nguoi Me Cam Sung (The Mother Holds Gun) and Me Vang Nha (Home without Mom), honouring the beauty and brave of Vietnamese women in war, have been adapted to film.
In 2000, he was awarded the Ho Chi Minh Prize in Literature and Art.
Both Thi and Xuan received the titles “Hero of the People’s Armed Forces”. — VNS