Portland Book Festival: Poems in Mai Der Vang's 'Primordial' amplify the human via a rare animal * Oregon ArtsWatch

"Often a book of poems is a collection, poems written in different places and times and circumstances. But for her third book, Primordial, poet Mai Der Vang chose a theme and a purpose - the saola - and spent three years doing research on the animal and working out the dozens of poems in the book. Vang, an American poet of Laotian Hmong descent, will discuss Primordial at the Portland Book Festival on Nov. 8."

"The cover of Primordial shows a dim image of a pregnant saola. The artwork, with the saola nearly invisible against a jungle background, captures perfectly the evanescent nature of the animal. The last sighting of a saola was on a tripped jungle camera in the Annamite mountains of Laos in 2013. ... I am here in California and you arethere in the Annamites. I seek you by wayof retreat, refugees fleeing a line of fireby way of shattered twilight...."

"The Hmong people of Laos were recruited as shadow warriors by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. When American soldiers withdrew from Southeast Asia, the Hmong were abandoned to find their own way. Vang's family came as refugees to Fresno, Calif., one of the largest concentrations of Hmong in the United States. Vang, 44, was born in Fresno and raised in a large extended family."

Mai Der Vang is an American poet of Laotian Hmong descent who wrote Primordial, a themed collection centered on the saola. She spent three years researching the rare, possibly extinct antelope-like saola and wrote dozens of poems about it. The book cover features a dim image of a pregnant saola, nearly invisible against a jungle background, echoing the animal's evanescence. The last confirmed sighting of a saola occurred on a tripped camera in the Annamite mountains of Laos in 2013. Saola function as a totem throughout the poems, standing in for the poet and carrying memory, history, ecology, and maternal intuition. Vang's family came to Fresno as Hmong refugees after U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia.

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