To Huu - the Revolutionary poet

 President Ho Chi Minh with Comrade To Huu

Revolutionary poet To Huu was born on October 4, 1920 in the imperial capital city of Hue as Nguyen Kim Thanh. Despite being poor, his family was quite artistic. His father was good at writing poems and his mother was well-known in the region as a singer of traditional songs.

To Huu was brought up in a creative family environment, and started writing poetry at the age of six under the supervision of his father.

At the age of 12, his mother died and a year later, To Huu went to Quoc Hoc - Hue High School. It was there that he started to learn about the plight of his country and Communist ideology. To Huu soon became a leader in the Democratic Youth League in Hue and in 1938 he was admitted to the Indochinese Communist Party.

In April 1939, To Huu was arrested by the French colonial authorities and detained in several prisons in the central region, including at prisons in the Tay Nguyen Central Highlands. Despite the harsh conditions in jail, To Huu maintained his revolutionary spirit and convictions. Together with other prison inmates, in March 1942 he escaped and continued his revolutionary activities under the enemy's hot pursue before successfully contacting a Party organisation operating in Thanh Hoa Province.

Three years later, in August 1945, To Huu was elected as the Chairman of an Insurrection Committee in Hue. A year later, when the anti-French Resistance War broke out (in late 1946), he was sent back to Thanh Hoa in the position as the Provincial Party Committee Secretary. In 1947, once again, To Huu was asked to serve in a new position - this time as the manager of arts and culture activities of the Ho Chi Minh government following the victory of the August revolution in 1945.

To Huu's development as a poet and his revolutionary activities were intertwined. His poems were first carried in newspapers produced by the Democratic Front and his work reflected a new voice in the contemporary poetry scene at that time in Viet Nam.