Victoria Chang’s poems encapsulate something that makes poetry unique among literature: they capture a fleeting moment and render it into a form that’s frozen in time yet dynamic. Her work is precise, with an attention to detail at a granular level; at the same time, Chang’s poetry casts a view on the larger, more universal qualities of a subject. Chang’s lemons and peaches are both singular pieces of fruit while also pointing us toward greater symbolic resonances. Impermanence and the ephemerality of material objects–including the body–are persistent themes throughout her writing. Chang’s poetry deftly balances two opposing registers of scale, the micro and the macro, the particular and the universal, the individual and the collective. In Chang’s poems, there’s an inbuilt tension that makes them exciting, energetic, open, and present.
Victoria Chang is the author of numerous volumes of poetry including, Barbie Chang, The Boss, Salvinia Molesta, and Circle. Her children’s books include Is Mommy?, illustrated by Marla Frazee, and Love, Love, a middle grade novel. She serves as program chair of Antioch’s low-residency MFA program.
Her most recent book of poetry, OBIT, out from Copper Canyon Press, was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award and the 2021 PEN America Literary Award, and was included on the New York Times list of 100 Notable Books of 2020.
We are thrilled to have Victoria on The Air/Light Podcast.
