Time is a Mother

Discover the Sunday Times bestselling collection from the TikTok sensation and author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

‘One of the most important poets of his generation’
ANDREW MCMILLAN, author of Physical

‘Powerful’
DUA LIPA

‘Redefines our idea of what an elegy can do it, what it is for’
ILYA KAMINSKY, author of Deaf Republic

In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Vivid, brave and propulsive, Vuong’s poems contend with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the value of joy in a perennially fractured American spirit.

The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time is a Mother is a return and a forging-forth all at once.