Xuan Dieu was born in 1916 in the south central province of Binh Dinh, but the central province of Ha Tinh is where the poet grew up. He was one of the leaders of the Tho Moi (New Poetry) movement.
In 1996, he was awarded a Ho Chi Minh Prize for Arts and Literature, the noblest honor for an artist. His body of work includes about 450 poems, a large number of which have never been published, seven prose works, translations, and critical writings. In the end, he was best known for his love poems, and has been dubbed the "king of love poems".
