Victoria Chang

WINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST POETRY COLLECTION 2024 'Chang has liberated the Ekphrastic form to new lyric heights and depths. Inventive, meditative, audacious, strange and soulful. A marvel of a collection that engages the eye and mind as much as the ear and heart' Raymond Antrobus Yesterday I slung my depression on my back and went to the...

A lover of strict form, best-selling poet Victoria Chang turns to compact Japanese waka, powerfully innovating on tradition while continuing her pursuit of one of life's hardest questions: how to let go. In The Trees Witness Everything, Victoria Chang reinvigorates language by way of concentration, using constraint to illuminate and free the wild interior. Largely composed in various Japanese syllabic...

Los Angeles Times Book Prize PEN Voelcker Award Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize New York Times 100 Notable Books Time Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books NPR's Best Books National Book Award in Poetry, Longlist National Book Critics Circle, Finalist Griffin Poetry Prize, Shortlist Frank Sanchez Book Award After her mother died, poet Victoria Chang refused to write elegies. Rather, she distilled her grief...

A poet watches the limbs of a eucalyptus tree get sawed off: the image persists, recurring across poems of art, language, selfhood, memory, and loss. Joan Mitchell said, When I talk about love, I mean loving a tree. When I talk about love, I mean loving where a tree used to be. Men assess the eucalyptus tree growing on the...