Seminars for Scholars, a Niles West club, zoomed with poet Truong Tran on Feb. 15 from 5th through 6th periods.

A Vietnamese-American poet, visual artist, and teacher, Tran has written eight books: “Placing the Accents,” 1999; “The Book of Perceptions,” 1999; “Dust and Conscience,” 2002; “Going Home, Coming Home/Vê nhà, th?m quê h??ng,” 2003; “Within the Margin,” 2004; “Four Letter Words,” 2008; “100 Words: Poems,” 2021; and “Book of the Other,” 2021.

Currently, Tran lives in San Francisco, teaching at Mills College.

Sponsor Tamara Jaffe hosted the seminar in the AVID classroom where Tran discussed what it meant to be a poet, answered students’ questions and read from some of his works,

“His recent collection, ‘The Book of the Other: Small By Comparison,’ is an extended reflection on the relationship of personal and social justice to the institutions that curate the arts in the US,” Jaffe said.

After hearing a few of his poems, students asked about Tran’s connection to poetry and the relationship between art and justice.

“I’m trying to understand what it means to be an artist in this time. Art for me is a voice. Art for me is the desire to express something. I believe that we are all sitting here talking about art and talking about poetry because we all have something to say, ” Tran explained. “We want to say something, we want to claim our voice in the world. Our voice is the road towards justice. The hope is that if something is not right in the world, we have a voice to respond to that.”

According to Tran, his voice is a form of justice which he hopes will spread to future generations through his writing. During the conversation, Tran presented insightful questions such as, “Why should we have to be courageous or brave to speak the truth?”

Overall, the event brought new perspectives to students from a poet’s point of view.

“The dialogue between students and poet was lively and reflected a wide array of questions about the nature of poetry and its relationship to justice,” Jaffe said.

“I am super grateful for the opportunity. I thought the conversation was super insightful and productive. It’s not very often where you get to take a peek into the mind of an artist like that, especially in an educational setting like here at school,” senior Paige Hoffman said. “Usually, you’re always looking from the outside in, and this time, it was nice to have someone who’s in that career come in and describe what his thought process is and what he does. It was really neat and I would love to do it again.”