[1] He was born Nguyễn Trọng Trí, at Lệ Mỹ Village, Đồng Hới District, Quảng Bình Province.

Hàn Mặc Tử's early poems—praised by Phan Bội Châu—are famous for their purity of diction and form, and show him to be a fluent Classicist with a strong interest in realistic subjects.

Personal despair combined with the search for poetic novelty led him to found the short-lived "Chaos" (Loạn) or "Mad" (Ðiên) school of poetry.

More than a love poet, Hàn Mặc Tử was a Modernist, who sought to fuse, in a new poetic language, disparate traditions and experiences.

[5] A bilingual Vietnamese–French choice of his poetry was published in 2001 by French scholar Hélène Péras (Le Hameau des roseaux, Aryufen).