Victoria Chang – författare

For fans of Inside Out and Back Again, Other Words for Home, and A Place to Hang the Moon -- Eureka is a gorgeous and emotionally resonant novel-in-verse by multiple-award-winning poet Victoria Chang that sensitively and lyrically renders the tragic events surrounding the 1885 expulsion of Chinese Americans from Eureka, California.Love illuminates the dark.The year is 1885. San Francisco is dangerous for Chinese immigrants like twelve-year-old Mei Mei. She must venture on her own, without her family or friends, to Eureka, California, where it is supposedly safe.But 300 miles from home, Mei Mei misses her Ma Ma’s kindness, helping out in her Ba Ba’s store, and playing hide-and-seek with her best friend, Hua Hua. Despite her fear and the increasing violence against her community, she finds hope in an unexpected friend, the giant Redwood trees, and a new dream: learning how to read in English. As the world around her grows more scary, Mei Mei discovers her own power, as well the joy of found family, the importance of courage, and the nature of freedom.

Winner of the Forward Prize for Best CollectionFinalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry AwardNamed a Best Book of the Year by NPRNamed One of the Best Poetry Collections of the Year by The Guardian, Literary Hub, and Electric Literature A new collection of poetry inspired by the work of Agnes Martin, exploring topics of feminism, art, depression, and grief, by the author of the prizewinning collection Obit. Yesterday I slung my depression on my back and went to the museum. I only asked four attendants where the Agnes painting was and the fifth one knew. I walked into the room and saw it right away. From afar, it was a large white square.With My Back to the World engages with the paintings and writings of Agnes Martin, the celebrated abstract artist, in ways that open up new modes of expression, expanding the scope of what art, poetry, and the human mind can do. Filled with surprise and insight, wit and profundity, the book explores the nature of the self, of existence, life and death, grief and depression, time and space. Strikingly original, fluidly strange, Victoria Chang’s new collection is a book that speaks to how we see and are seen.

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2022''Impeccable, precise poems, sometimes shocking and strange, but always startling'' Irish TimesA 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 forms called ''wakas,'' each poem is shaped by pattern and count. This highly original work innovates inside the lineage of great poets including W.S. Merwin, whose poem titles are repurposed as frames and mirrors for the text, stitching past and present in complex dialogue. Chang depicts the smooth, melancholic isolation of the mind while reaching outward to name - with reverence, economy and whimsy - the ache of wanting, the hawk and its shadow, our human urge to hide the minute beneath the light.

Los Angeles Times Book PrizePEN Voelcker AwardAnisfield-Wolf Book PrizeNew York Times 100 Notable BooksTime Magazine''s 100 Must-Read BooksNPR''s Best BooksNational Book Award in Poetry, LonglistNational Book Critics Circle, FinalistGriffin Poetry Prize, ShortlistFrank Sanchez Book AwardAfter her mother died, poet Victoria Chang refused to write elegies. Rather, she distilled her grief during a feverish two weeks by writing scores of poetic obituaries for all she lost in the world. These poems reinvent the form of newspaper obituary to both name what has died (''civility,'' ''language,'' ''the future,'' ''Mother''s blue dress'') and the cultural impact of death on the living. Loss, and the love for the dead, becomes a conduit for self-expression. In this unflinching and lyrical book, Chang meets her grief and creates a powerful testament for the living.''Chang''s new collection explores her father''s illness and her mother''s death, treating mortality as a constantly shifting enigma. A serene acceptance of grief'' New York Times, "100 Notable Books of 2020"''Exceptional... Chang''s poems expand and contract to create surprising geometries of language, vividly capturing the grief they explore'' Publishers Weekly

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 AntrobusYesterday I slung my depression on my back and went to the museum. I only asked four attendants where the Agnes painting was and the fifth one knew. I walked into the room and saw it right away. From afar, it was a large white square.WITH MY BACK TO THE WORLD engages with the paintings and writings of Agnes Martin, the celebrated abstract modern artist, in ways that open up new modes of expression, expanding the scope of what art, poetry, and the human mind can do. Filled with surprise and insight, wit and profundity, the book explores the nature of the self, of existence, life and death, grief and depression, time and space. Strikingly original, fluidly strange, Victoria Chang''s new collection is a book that speaks to how we see and are seen. With My Back to the World won the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection on the 10th October 2024

''A poet of precision, intellect and considerable emotional heft'' ROXANE GAY

''Chang''s latest collection continues her engagement with visual art [...] creating space for Chang to meditate on language, grief and our relationship to history . . . Evocative'' GUARDIANA 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 poet''s street; a crane arrives. The sound of a chainsaw rings in the air and branches begin to fall. This tree-cutting haunts the poet, and refracts across the remarkable work collected in Tree of Knowledge as Chang turns her thoughts to artists such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Mitchell and Hilma af Klint.

Roving, evocative, and intricate, Tree of Knowledge is rooted in Victoria Chang''s crystalline voice and generous, probing gaze, and by certain images ― trees, a hanging figure, a branch, fingertips, a briefcase ― that resurface like apparitions.

Victoria Chang is the author of three previous poetry books. In 2013, she won the PEN Center USA Literary Award and a California Book Award. Chang teaches poetry at Chapman University and lives in Southern California.

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.