Victoria Chang – författare

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

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.