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Poet of the Week

Victoria Chang

July 12, 2026

Victoria Chang's book of poems, Tree of Knowledge was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the U.S. and Corsair/Little Brown in the U.K. in July 2026. Her most recent book of poems, With My Back to the World, received the Forward Prize in Poetry for Best Collection. A few of her other books include The Trees Witness Everything, OBIT, and Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief. She has written several children's books as well, such as Eureka. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Chowdhury International Prize in Literature, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She is the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and Director of Poetry@Tech.

On some
days, when I am too heavy with joy, I divide
myself into cubes and triangles so that I can
once again be faceted. What to do with my
dead mother's proverbs, my dead father's
unlived years.

I understand that we all want our poems to be read by someone, but sometimes our level of ambition might need to be recalibrated for mental health… We're not put on this world as poets to be famous and/or to be admired or to last. We're here to experience the joys of making art and exchanging art and ideas with other people who are alive at the same time as us.
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