Amsterdam Review: How would you describe your poetry in a few words?
Victoria Chang: Lately I have been exploring grief and joy and how these feelings are related. I’m always interested in the ineffability of language. I like philosophy and the big questions. When I write poetry, I find myself asking the same questions as scientists and philosophers.
AR: What can you tell us about your writing process? Do you follow a particular ritual or routine?
VC: I must be very passionate about whatever it is I feel is itching at me. So I need to be in my own mind for a long time and wait as long as possible to actually sit down and write. Because if I try and write when I have no passion or no urgency, then it’s not that interesting to me. I don’t know if the poems would be any better or worse if I did just sit down and write whenever. I don’t write that often, even though it appears I do because I’ve been publishing a lot in the last few years. I like revising, so I can spend years revising. That’s more enjoyable than drafting. It needs years to bubble, for a poem to reach maturity over time. You can write a poem in ten minutes, but it’s been ten years in the making.
AR: What are the main influences behind your work?
VC: I’ve noticed that I tend to be inspired by artists or writers that seem different. I know it when I see it. I have a poetry group that meets every Saturday morning. We’re reading “Sacred Emily” by Gertrude Stein. It’s just so weird and I love the weirdness. It’s very oddly emotional and that’s why it clicks. I like to watch the poem move language-wise, and where it delays and stays with a kind of stream of language or sound or character or meaning. I’m always interested in seeing how these kinds of artists’ brains work. I’m interested in philosophical artists who leave a lot of space for the viewer or the reader, work where there’s an invitation for the viewer. That’s also why I like abstract art, and artists like Edward Hopper.
AR: It sounds like you’re seduced by artists who let their unconscious pull you in, who let the unconscious do most of the work for them.
VC: Yes, I think it’s hard to plan art, even if you have a notebook like Hopper did or af Klint, there’s still a lot of discovery that happens in the process.
AR: Who are you looking forward to seeing at the festival this year?
VC: I already feel like I’ve met some friends. I like seeing the young people. I met with some high school students today, who were newer to poems. There were also younger writers who read and I was happy to meet them. I enjoy the young energy here because it’s often hard to get young people interested at poetry readings. I’m also very excited that there are poets from all around the world. I’m excited to see as many poets read as possible.
AR: Are there certain poets you’d like to see here in the future?
VC: From the UK, I’m very interested in Raymond Antrobus. I love seeing him read—he’s so incredibly engaging. I also love Jenny George’s poems, and Chen Chen is also a fun and talented poet who reads really well. I think it would be nice to see Don Mee Choi read since I haven’t before. She also translates the poetry of Kim Hyesoon who would also be incredible to see read.
AR: Is poetry something that you feel can give meaning to life? Can the world be a continuous discovery through poetry?
VC: I think poetry wakes people’s feelings up. People here have come to me to say they were touched by my poems. In America, you’d say “moved,” but I like the tactile nuance of “touched” as opposed to “moved.” What’s being moved, is it your heart, is it your soul? Poetry is always exploring slight nuances in language, it makes us alive, it can really awaken feelings in people. One person said to me “I don’t usually like poetry, it’s music and dance I’m much more touched by. But your poems touched me.” And he didn’t know exactly what it was. Poetry—art—needs to happen to you. Art brings up dormant feelings and it’s always a surprise. We’re all waiting to be awakened. Every time I go into the world, I cannot wait for that feeling to happen.
AR: Tell us about your new book With My Back to the World (FSG, 2024). What brought about the dialogue with Agnes Martin’s work?
VC: The first poem I wrote in the book was actually a commission by the MoMA in New York, an ekphrastic piece on the art of Agnes Martin. Once I read that poem aloud, I realized that I wasn’t done conversing with Agnes Martin. So I began a long relationship with her work and her writings and continued dialoguing with her work by writing poems.
AR: Do you think language can determine a similar point of application as her paintings do, especially when it comes to grief, depression, loneliness?
VC: I think I was asking this question through poems—can language do what art does? I am always interested in thinking about the inadequacies of language. In fact, I sometimes think that I write because language is failure.
AR: Could the very limitations of language, like those of abstract expressionism, be the thing that charts the course toward the unknown, and from the unknown to revelation?
VC: I think the limitations of language, or perhaps the slippage of language can be less inadequacies, but perhaps an open field, that can possibly lead to some kind of revelation or transcendence. I think this is the kind of poetry or writing I like to read and try and write. A poem as an open field. An invitation to the imagination.
Victoria Chang: Lately I have been exploring grief and joy and how these feelings are related. I’m always interested in the ineffability of language. I like philosophy and the big questions. When I write poetry, I find myself asking the same questions as scientists and philosophers.
AR: What can you tell us about your writing process? Do you follow a particular ritual or routine?
VC: I must be very passionate about whatever it is I feel is itching at me. So I need to be in my own mind for a long time and wait as long as possible to actually sit down and write. Because if I try and write when I have no passion or no urgency, then it’s not that interesting to me. I don’t know if the poems would be any better or worse if I did just sit down and write whenever. I don’t write that often, even though it appears I do because I’ve been publishing a lot in the last few years. I like revising, so I can spend years revising. That’s more enjoyable than drafting. It needs years to bubble, for a poem to reach maturity over time. You can write a poem in ten minutes, but it’s been ten years in the making.
AR: What are the main influences behind your work?
VC: I’ve noticed that I tend to be inspired by artists or writers that seem different. I know it when I see it. I have a poetry group that meets every Saturday morning. We’re reading “Sacred Emily” by Gertrude Stein. It’s just so weird and I love the weirdness. It’s very oddly emotional and that’s why it clicks. I like to watch the poem move language-wise, and where it delays and stays with a kind of stream of language or sound or character or meaning. I’m always interested in seeing how these kinds of artists’ brains work. I’m interested in philosophical artists who leave a lot of space for the viewer or the reader, work where there’s an invitation for the viewer. That’s also why I like abstract art, and artists like Edward Hopper.
AR: It sounds like you’re seduced by artists who let their unconscious pull you in, who let the unconscious do most of the work for them.
VC: Yes, I think it’s hard to plan art, even if you have a notebook like Hopper did or af Klint, there’s still a lot of discovery that happens in the process.
AR: Who are you looking forward to seeing at the festival this year?
VC: I already feel like I’ve met some friends. I like seeing the young people. I met with some high school students today, who were newer to poems. There were also younger writers who read and I was happy to meet them. I enjoy the young energy here because it’s often hard to get young people interested at poetry readings. I’m also very excited that there are poets from all around the world. I’m excited to see as many poets read as possible.
AR: Are there certain poets you’d like to see here in the future?
VC: From the UK, I’m very interested in Raymond Antrobus. I love seeing him read—he’s so incredibly engaging. I also love Jenny George’s poems, and Chen Chen is also a fun and talented poet who reads really well. I think it would be nice to see Don Mee Choi read since I haven’t before. She also translates the poetry of Kim Hyesoon who would also be incredible to see read.
AR: Is poetry something that you feel can give meaning to life? Can the world be a continuous discovery through poetry?
VC: I think poetry wakes people’s feelings up. People here have come to me to say they were touched by my poems. In America, you’d say “moved,” but I like the tactile nuance of “touched” as opposed to “moved.” What’s being moved, is it your heart, is it your soul? Poetry is always exploring slight nuances in language, it makes us alive, it can really awaken feelings in people. One person said to me “I don’t usually like poetry, it’s music and dance I’m much more touched by. But your poems touched me.” And he didn’t know exactly what it was. Poetry—art—needs to happen to you. Art brings up dormant feelings and it’s always a surprise. We’re all waiting to be awakened. Every time I go into the world, I cannot wait for that feeling to happen.
AR: Tell us about your new book With My Back to the World (FSG, 2024). What brought about the dialogue with Agnes Martin’s work?
VC: The first poem I wrote in the book was actually a commission by the MoMA in New York, an ekphrastic piece on the art of Agnes Martin. Once I read that poem aloud, I realized that I wasn’t done conversing with Agnes Martin. So I began a long relationship with her work and her writings and continued dialoguing with her work by writing poems.
AR: Do you think language can determine a similar point of application as her paintings do, especially when it comes to grief, depression, loneliness?
VC: I think I was asking this question through poems—can language do what art does? I am always interested in thinking about the inadequacies of language. In fact, I sometimes think that I write because language is failure.
AR: Could the very limitations of language, like those of abstract expressionism, be the thing that charts the course toward the unknown, and from the unknown to revelation?
VC: I think the limitations of language, or perhaps the slippage of language can be less inadequacies, but perhaps an open field, that can possibly lead to some kind of revelation or transcendence. I think this is the kind of poetry or writing I like to read and try and write. A poem as an open field. An invitation to the imagination.
Victoria Chang’s most recent book of poems is With My Back to the World, published in 2024 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the US and Corsair in the UK. It is the winner of the 2024 Forward Prize in Poetry. She is the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and Director of Poetry@Tech.
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