Poetry Corner: Ho Chi Minh’s Prison Poetry

As well as being the anti-colonial and revolutionary leader of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh was also a keen poet. Here we feature some of the poems wrote by Ho Chi Minh during a long period of imprisonment.

In 1942, at age 52, Ho Chi Minh was arrested in South China, accused of being a spy by Nationalist forces. For fourteen months, bound in leg irons, he was shifted from jail to jail. Throughout he kept a diary written in poetry. The following poems are a selection of poems from Ho Chi Minh’s Prison Diary.

Ho Chi Minh – How I became a communist

Today is the 130th anniversary of the birth of Vietnamese revolutionary icon Ho Chi Minh. In this short article, first published in April 1960, Uncle Ho explains how he came to Marxism Leninism through his determination to free Vietnam from colonial domination.