According to information from writer Nguyen Quang Lap, poet Lam Thi My Da passed away at 5am on July 6, at the age of 74. Before that, she suffered from Alzheimer's disease for 14 long years.

Poet Lam Thi My Da was born in 1949 in Quang Binh, lived in Hue and recently moved to Ho Chi Minh City with her family. She is the wife of writer Hoang Phu Ngoc Tuong.

Poet Lam Thi My Da studied at Nguyen Du Writing School, then she became a reporter and editor of Huong River Magazine of the Thua Thien Hue Literature and Arts Association.

She has been a member of the Vietnam Writers Association since 1978. She attended training courses at the Gorky Academy (former Soviet Union) and was a member of the Executive Committee of the Vietnam Writers Association, terms III and IV.

Works of poet Lam Thi My Da: The Birth of the Heart (poetry, 1974); The Poem Without Years (poetry, 1983); The Famous Song of the Land (children's story, 1984); The Deer and the Stream (children's story, 1987); The Eternal Reward (children's story, 1987); Picking Your Youth in Your Hands ( poetry, 1989); Musician Phuong Hoang (children's story, 1989); Mother and Child (poetry, 1994); Dedicated to a Dream (poetry, 1998); Young Rice (poetry, 2005); Collection of Poems and Children's Stories (2006); Soul Full of Wild Chrysanthemums (poetry, 2007); The Sky - Bomb Crater (poetry, 1972); Folk Tales of Our Country (poetry, 1978).

In 2005, her poetry collection Green Rice was translated into English, printed and published in the United States.

Her poems such as "Our Country's Folktales" and "The Sky - Bomb Crater " have been taught in the general literature curriculum and have become familiar to many generations of readers.

During her writing career, she won the First Prize in the Literature and Arts Newspaper Poetry Contest 1971-1973. The Vietnam Writers Association Literature Award for the poetry collection Poetry Without Years and Months . The A Prize for Poetry from the National Committee of the Vietnam Literature and Arts Associations in 1999. The A Prize for Poetry from the Ancient Capital Literature and Arts Award (1998-2004) from the Provincial People's Committee and the Thua Thien Hue Literature and Arts Association.

In 2007, poet Lam Thi My Da was awarded the State Prize for Literature and Arts for three collections of poetry: Birth of the Heart (1974), Poem Without Years and Months (1983) and Dedicating to a Dream (1988).

Commenting on Lam Thi My Da's poetry, poet and literary researcher Ho The Ha once wrote: " Lam Thi My Da's poetry is rich in meaning. The poetic ideas are always surprising. It seems that if a strange idea cannot be created, the poem is still in the imagination." And poet Ngo Van Phu also commented: "Lam Thi My Da's poetry is beautiful in the unexpected, bewildered places and the feminine emotions."

The passing of poet Lam Thi My Da left behind a great deal of grief for friends and colleagues in the literary world. Writer Nguyen Quang Lap expressed his condolences: "You are gone, I love you so much!"

Poet Nguyen Quang Thieu, Chairman of the Vietnam Writers Association, mourned the poetess : “Decades ago, I called her an angel who had come down to earth because of her beautiful and holy face, because of her infinitely pure soul, and because her poems always resounded like songs of love, gentle and carrying a fragile but pervasive beauty. It seemed that she came down to this world only to show a beautiful face, a pure soul, and to resound poems of love and protection. Even the poems she wrote about the losses in war also resounded with that beauty.

In the famous poem "The Sky of a Bomb Crater", she wrote: "I look down into the bomb crater that killed you/The rain leaves a small patch of sky/Our country is kind/The water of the sky soothes the painful wounds". At this moment, I feel that every flower blooming in the summer carries the beauty of her face, her soul and her poetry. I bow my head in memory of her and look up to the light where she flew back to".

Screenwriter Nguyen Thuy sadly wrote: " The day my teacher took me to Hue for the first time, I loved Hue more because the woman I met was Lam Thi My Da. She was from the same hometown as my teacher, but to me, she was still "very Hue", gentle and feminine, attentive and extremely beautiful, she still kept her "sky" after so many "bomb craters" of life. This morning, in a strange city, I heard that she had passed away. My heart skipped a beat, mourning her, a talented writer, a beautiful woman".

My Anh