Awakened Stars reflects on the fragile beauty of human connection amid loss and change. It begins in darkness where space feels endless yet through the smallest gestures such as kindness, remembrance, and love, the light returns. The work seeks to capture how language, even when broken, can still heal; how poetry can become a quiet act of care in a fractured world.
I believe poetry, in any form, remains a language of endurance and repair. It allows us to remember what the world forgets. This piece was written as both reflection and offering, a reminder that tenderness, like starlight, travels far beyond despair.
The project is part of the subtheme The Poetics of Care – Intimacy, Tenderness, Repair.
Author
Vo Thi Nhu Mai
Võ Thị Như Mai (Mai White) was born in Vietnam and began her career as a high school teacher before moving to Australia to pursue higher education. She holds a Master of Education and a Master of Literature and has worked as a full-time teacher in Western Australia for over twenty years. She is the founder of the long run THE RHYTHM OF VIETNAM, a platform promoting writers from Vietnam and many other parts of the world. She also started working as a reporter of MULTICULTURAL PRESS.COM.AU, featuring many multicultural aspects of the writing world. In May 2025, she was honoured with an Excellence Award from the Consulate General in Australia, recognizing her outstanding contributions to the preservation and promotion of her native language and literary heritage within the international community.
