Found: Poems

“In 1978, my parents lived in building #48. Nong Khai, Thailand, a Lao refugee camp. My father kept a scrapbook filled with doodles, addresses, postage stamps, maps, measurements. He threw it out and when he did, I took it and found this.”

Built out of doodles, diagrams, and drawings, this is a work characterized by the elegance and power of its bareness. These poems use blank spaces and small print. Their language is exquisitely precise in detail, and every letter, gesture, break, line, and shape becomes a place of real meaning. Here, the intention is to let us see, as well as to hold back much of what we see.

First published in 2007, Souvankham Thammavongsa's remarkable second collection was acclaimed for its originality and cemented her reputation as a poet with a rare, astonishing gift.