Hoa Nguyen Awarded the C. D. Wright Award for Poetry
Chosen by a panel of artists within the field of poetics, Hoa Nguyen was awarded the C.D. Wright Prize, an endowed annual award bestowed by a nomination process and established in 2017 in memory of the poet C.D. Wright by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA). The forty-five thousand dollars ($45,000 USD) award is made annually through Grants to Artists to a poet over the age of 50 whose work exemplifies Wright's vibrant lyricism, seriousness, and striking originality and is administered by a confidential nomination and selection process. The mission of the FCA has been to encourage, sponsor, and promote innovative work in the arts created and presented by individuals, groups, and organizations since its inception in 1963.
Artist Statement
I like to think that my poems allow narrative to meet the page and the reader as the past and future in exchange and make possible for a new worlding. Poems that make solid a narrative not possible before, where ‘the real’ may be attached to words or image, not as a monument to itself, but as something else. Something that feels relational and enriches perspectives. I write on the quest proposed by Joanne Kyger: “to find those lost vibrating overtones of the poetry stone” as I seek innovations in sound/meaning possibilities. I am interested in play, odd rhythms, burs, muddiness, inventions, spondees, and slippage. I write poetry because “the Vietnamese believe they have always been poets.”
- December 2023
Hoa Nguyen
2024 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry
Poetry
Poet, Educator
Born 1967, Vinh Long, Vietnam
Lives in Toronto, Canada
She/Her
Additional Information
Biography
Hoa Nguyen is a poet of a “troubled lyric”. Born in the Mekong Delta at the height of the war in Vietnam, Nguyen immigrated to the United States where she was raised and educated, and has lived in Canada since 2011. Her writing is influenced by the dissonance, style, and political frameworks of punk and post-punk bands such as Bad Brains from Washington, DC. which fused jazz, funk, reggae, and punk into their music.
A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure (Wave Books, 2021) was inspired by Nguyen’s ambition to evoke her mother’s life as a celebrated stunt motorcycle rider who left Vietnam with her child (Nguyen) and never returned. The lyric poems reweave the ruptures of diasporic experience from obscured archive and rearticulates them in modes of verse biography and hybrid-documentary informed by song. With features of investigative storytelling, polyphony, lyric embodiment, and seriality, the work dialogues with difficulty as it exposes the problems inherent in archive, intergenerational memory, cultural loss, and language itself and arranges a correspondence with a cartography of ghosts.
Nguyen’s other books include Ask About Language As If It Forgets (knife fork book, 2019), You then a Dang (Belladonna* Collaborative, 2017), Violet Energy Ingots (Wave Books, 2016), Tells of the Crackling (Ugly Duckling Press, 2015), Red Juice: Poems 1998 — 2008 (Wave Books, 2014), and As Long As Trees Last Wave Books, 2012).
A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure was named a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award (2022), the Governor General’s Award (2021), and the National Book Award (2021). Her book Violet Energy Ingots received a Griffin Prize nomination (2017). In 2020, she was nominated for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, also known as the “American Nobel.”
Nguyen teaches poetry and creative writing at Toronto Metropolitan University, and serves as a mentor for graduate students at Guelph University and the University of Toronto. She received her M.F.A. in Poetics from the New College of California, San Francisco, CA and her B.A. in Social Sciences from the University of Maryland, College Park, MD.
Press Release
New York, NY, February 15, 2024 – Today, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA) announced the recipients of its 2024 Grants to Artists awards—twenty-three individual artists recognized for their contemporary, experimental work in five different categories and selected to receive unrestricted $45,000 awards. This year two new annual awards were inaugurated: The Viola Farber Award, named in honor of the choreographer and early FCA Board member, and dedicated to supporting a NYC-based dancer; and The Alvin Lucier Award for Music endowed by composer and explorer of sonic phenomena Alvin Lucier, to be made to a composer, performer, or sound engineer.
Totaling $1,035,000 in awards, this year’s grantees in the areas of Dance, Music/Sound, Performance Art/Theater, Poetry, and Visual Arts are:
Dance
Petra Bravo, San Juan, Puerto Rico / THE DOROTHEA TANNING AWARD Joanna Kotze, Brooklyn, NY
Hsiao-Jou Tang, New York, NY / THE VIOLA FARBER AWARD
Music/Sound
Morgan Craft, New Brighton, MN
Yulan Grant, Brooklyn, NY
James Lo, New York, NY / THE ALVIN LUCIER AWARD FOR MUSIC Koichi Makigami, Atami, Shizouka, Japan
Ava Mendoza, Brooklyn, NY
Nathan Young, Norman, OK / THE JOHN CAGE AWARD
Performance Art/Theater
Tei Blow, Brooklyn, NY
Nile Harris, Brooklyn, NY / This award is supported by the FCA Friends
Poetry
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Baltimore, MD
aj carruthers, Yass, Australia / THE CY TWOMBLY AWARD FOR POETRY Saretta Morgan, Atlanta, GA
Hoa Nguyen, Toronto, Canada / THE C.D. WRIGHT AWARD FOR POETRY
Visual Arts
Sam Contis, Oakland, CA
Sharon Hayes, Philadelphia, PA
Suzanne Jackson, Savannah, Georgia / THE HELEN FRANKENTHALER AWARD FOR PAINTING Athena LaTocha, Peekskill, NY
Guadalupe Maravilla, New York, NY / THE ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG AWARD
Malcolm Peacock, Brooklyn, NY / THE ROY LICHTENSTEIN AWARD
Ronny Quevedo, New York, NY / THE RICHARD POUSETTE-DART AWARD
Takako Yamaguchi, Santa Monica, CA
“We are thrilled to celebrate the twenty-three artists who comprise this year’s Grants to Artists Award recipients” said Cecily Brown, Board Co-Chair of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. “Ranging from early career artists to those whose work has long deserved more recognition, these artists have inspired us with their bold ideas, rigorous practices, and engagement with their communities.” She added, “The opportunity to inaugurate two new annual awards in memory of choreographer Viola Farber and composer Alvin Lucier this year is a tremendous gift, and very fitting given their own history of collaboration. We’re honored to carry forward their legacies to encourage countless artists.” Lucier was music director for Farber’s company for five years (1972-1977).
Launched in 1993, the Grants to Artists awards are unrestricted, by-nomination grants that provide recipients with the financial means to engage in any artistic endeavors they wish to pursue. In addition to the financial support, the awards provide grantees with meaningful peer recognition and encouragement. Each year, the Foundation conducts national outreach to invite artists and arts professionals to nominate one exceptional individual, collective, or performing group whom they feel deserves and will benefit from an unrestricted $45,000 award. FCA staff conduct research to inform the deliberations of a selection committee that includes FCA’s Board members along with guest panelists working in the five disciplines FCA supports. Nominated artists are not asked to apply, and artists are informed only when they have been awarded the grant.
The recipients were selected by members of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts including Cecily Brown, Anne Collier, Anthony B. Creamer III, Jasper Johns, Jennie C. Jones, Julian Lethbridge, Dean Moss, Emily Wei Rales, Matana Roberts, James Welling, and John Yau. The participating Directors of FCA were joined in the grant selection process by poet and essayist Marcella Durand (2021 FCA C.D. Wright Awardee), composer and performer James Fei (2014 FCA Grantee); curator and writer Ruth Estévez, choreographer and performer Iréne Hultman Monti (1995 FCA Grantee), choreographer and performer Rashaun Mitchell (2013 FCA Grantee), and poet, writer and recording artist Carl Hancock Rux.
Financial support for the Grants to Artists awards stems from a community of artists—artists for artists—joined by individuals and foundations that support FCA’s enduring mission. For the seventh year, one Grants to Artists award is underwritten by the membership dues of the FCA FRIENDS, a group that began in 2017 and is comprised of thoughtful and serious arts patrons. In 2024, the FCA Friends will support Nile Harris.
The Alvin Lucier Award for Music and The Viola Farber Award join nine other previously endowed or funded Grants to Artists awards established in the memory of and named for artists, many of whom are directly connected to FCA’s history. These include: The John Cage Award; The Merce Cunningham Award; The Helen Frankenthaler Award for Painting; The Roy Lichtenstein Award; The Richard Pousette-Dart Award; The Robert Rauschenberg Award; The Dorothea Tanning Award; The Cy Twombly Award for Poetry; and The C.D. Wright Award for Poetry.
Viola Farber Award
The Viola Farber Award is a new $45,000 unrestricted award made annually to support a NYC-based experimental dancer—it is the first FCA award created to recognize the interpretive artistry and innovation that dancers bring to their field. Named in memory of dancer, choreographer, teacher, and director Viola Farber (1931-1998), the Farber Award was initiated by and is supported in part by a multi-year gift from choreographer and 2010 Grantee Pam Tanowitz, a student of Farber’s at Sarah Lawrence College. FCA endowed the award with proceeds raised at its 60th Anniversary Gala.
Farber served on FCA’s Board of Directors from 1969-1988. A founding member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company before launching her own dance company in 1968, Farber was a devoted teacher, ensuring that each dancer was recognized for their individuality.
Alvin Lucier Award for Music
Established through a bequest from the Estate of composer Alvin Lucier (1931-2021), The Alvin Lucier Award for Music is a new $45,000 unrestricted award that will annually recognize a composer, performer, or sound engineer who has made a significant contribution to the field of experimental music. A pioneering composer and experimentalist, Lucier’s work shaped acoustic phenomena revealed by the physical sciences into musical expression. In 1966, Lucier founded Sonic Arts Union together with Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma. His commitment to teaching brought Lucier to Brandeis University (1962-1970) and Wesleyan University (1968-2011), where he inspired countless students with his work and collaborative relationships with foundational composers including FCA Co-Founder John Cage and Grantee David Tudor, among many others.
FCA will celebrate the 2024 grantees with a Grants Reception on April 8. Artist statements, biographies, work samples, and other information about the 2024 grantees are available on FCA’s website. High-resolution images and additional information are available upon request.
About the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA)
The mission of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts is to encourage, sponsor, and promote innovative work in the arts created and presented by individuals, groups, and organizations. Since FCA’s inception, more than 7,000 grants to artists and arts organizations—totaling over $27 million—have provided opportunities for creative exploration and the realization of new work. FCA’s unrestricted, by-nomination Grants to Artists recognize 23 artists each year with awards of $45,000 for their pioneering work across the fields of dance, music/sound, performance art/theater, poetry, and the visual arts. In addition to its Grants to Artist program, FCA’s Emergency Grants provide urgent funding to approximately 200 artists annually to respond to sudden opportunities to present their work, or unexpected expenses for projects close to completion. Artists are primarily responsible for the Foundation’s existence, its growth, and its continuation. To date, over 1,000 artists have contributed artwork to help fund FCA’s grant programs; and financial contributions from like- minded individuals and foundations significantly enhance FCA’s ability to recognize and support innovative artists.
FCA was established by John Cage (1912-1992) and Jasper Johns in 1963. At the time, emerging visual artists were experiencing modest financial success, while many of their peers working in dance, music, and theater struggled to find funding for their work. FCA was initially operated on a volunteer basis by a group of artists who together organized benefit exhibitions, made grants, and produced performances by innovative artists. Many of the artists who participated in those early years would go on to make significant contributions to American arts and culture.
www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org (external link)
For more information, please contact: Sascha Freudenheim
PAVE Communications & Consulting sascha@paveconsult.com 917-544-6057