Chua village in Son Cong commune, Ung Hoa district on the outskirts of Hanoi is known as a poem village because local people have a great passion for poems and reciting poems with many of them being poets and writers.

According to VOVworld, the people of Chua village live mainly by farming. For many generations, their lives have been closely associated with rice fields but their souls are full of passion for the arts. On the village gates, there are four ancient words meaning looking at scripts when you go in and out of the village.

80-year-old Nguyen Nho Te says poems and scripts have long been indispensable in the villagers’ spiritual lives. He said “Chua villagers are very proud of the four words on the village gates. They reflect the village’s fine tradition".

Villagers recite poems to teach their children about morality and good things, which Te said, are to make them live and behave better. Visitors to the village are welcomed with beautiful poems, which are displayed along the village’s paths.

The poems say: “ Without eating, you can’t walk, without learning, you can’t see your road ”, “Plants need both earth and sky, humans need both cereal and dreams” and “Our hands grow seeds, our mouths grow words”. Weather and time can wash out the words, but their meaning echoes in the memories of Chua villagers.

Nguyen Xuan Sung, a member of the Poetry Club, said: " We hang the poems on the wall along the road to inspire both old and young people, especially children and youths to live up to the fine traditions of the village. We now have 25 beautiful sayings extracted from our poems”.

In every corner of the village, it is easy to see that poems have become an indispensable part of local people’s lives. From the communal house to the field and in every house, poems are visible. Everyone in the village loves poems and can recite poems. They have recited thousands of poems and six collections have been printed.

The Poetry Club of Chua village has nearly 100 members, including old and young, men and women. Secondary school student Nguyen Thu Trang, the youngest member of the club, won the village’s first prize for writing a poem about her mother.

“I have just joined in this poetry club. I want to continue the tradition of my village. I love my mother very much and wrote a poem dedicated to her”, said Trang.

For Chua villagers, reciting poems is a way they express their emotions and thoughts, so the words in their poems are as simple as their lives. Ngo Manh Cuong, head of the Poetry Club, said: "Poems in Chua village are not for sale, they are used to inspire people, especially younger people. Every Thursday, we have a poem-reciting programme on our local radio station. These poems have helped tighten the relationship between villagers”.

Poems come naturally to Chua villagers and through many generations, they have enriched the beauty of the village and create a common voice for locals, bringing them closer to one another.-VNA