Chen Chen

[chenchenwrites]

Now accepting 2019 Kundiman Asian American Creative Writing Retreat applications!

Faculty include Hala Alyan, Myung Mi Kim, Craig Santos Perez, Tania James, & Shawn Wong! Open now through 1/15! Apply and spread the word. 

Ahhhhh. The Kundiman Retreat legit changed my life. Look at the giddiness on my face in this pic, from the 2016 Retreat! What a beautiful home group, led by the brilliant Margaret Rhee. What courage & community, what trees & shorteralls. Give yourself this gift! Apply, apply!

[chenchenwrites]

Bouquets of thanks to U.S. Poet Laureate (!!) Tracy K. Smith (!!!) for selecting & discussing my poem "In the Hospital" in this new episode of her podcast, The Slowdown. Poetry podcasts are joy.

Listen here. 

[chenchenwrites]

Haven’t posted here in a minute! Slowly catching up with publication news—so glad & moved to have new work in West Branch. These two poems, along with a comment, are part of a special feature, “Welcome to the River: Poets on Queerness & Lineage,” edited by David Winter. Here are my contributor copies + the first page of the longer poem. You can also read this special feature online at the official West Branch site. 

Many thanks to David for asking me to be a part of this gathering; what an honor to share space with Oliver Baez Bendorf, Kathy Fagan, Carl Phillips, and Rickey Laurentiis.

And shout-out to Joseph O. Legaspi in my comment. My first poem here, “The School of Logic” is for the super logical and always beautiful Jeff Gilbert. My second poem, “The School of Joy / Letter to Michelle Lin” is dedicated in memory to my wonderful student Tanya Jones & addressed to the brilliant Michelle Lin, who always knows what snacks to bring. With love & queer futures. ❤️

[chenchenwrites]

tomorrow night!! so excited to be a part of this @kundimanforever reading in rochester! & at the spirit room~ glad to be joining @fictionalsejal, @bossavocado, & mara ahmed for this beautiful event 💫

[chenchenwrites]

Gratitude to Eve Ewing for reposting on Twitter these words from Audre Lorde :: “If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.”

[chenchenwrites]

#Repost @peculiarjournal with @get_repost ・・・ { National Coming Out Day } Excerpt from "I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party" by Chen Chen. Follow this wonderful queer poet on Instagram and Twitter @chenchenwrites We send love to all those out, coming out, or not able to come out today. You are beautiful, and we will walk with you and be here for you should you ever need 🖤🌈🖤

[chenchenwrites]

So thrilled to announce that Bloodaxe Books will be publishing the UK edition of my book in June 2019. Many thanks to Editor Neil Astley for his kind interest in and support for my work. It’s amazing to find myself in the company of BOA poets Kim Addonizio and Naomi Shihab Nye, who have had volumes of selected poems come out with Bloodaxe Books. 

Thanks to Steven Beckly—a Chinese-born, Toronto-based visual artist I’ve long been a fan of—for allowing us to use this gorgeous photograph of jellyfish as the new cover image. And thanks to Peter Conners, Ron Martin-Dent, Kelly Hatton, and everyone at BOA Editions for continuing to provide such enthusiastic support.

If you are based in the UK and/or know of literary happenings I should check out, please let me know. I’d love to come read and converse and drink copious amounts of tea.

🇬🇧 Preorder the UK edition 🇬🇧

P.S. Also announced today: Bloodaxe Books will be publishing the UK edition of Patricia Smith’s INCENDIARY ART!!

P.P.S. I’ve long been a fan of the work of Chinese-born, Toronto-based visual artist Steven Beckly. Check out more of his work over on his official site & on his tumblr. &: probably my favorite series of photos, “Little Wolf: Let’s Make Some Memories.”

[chenchenwrites]

New poem in the fall issue of Massachusetts Review! It’s called “Autumn” & maybe it’s a bit on the nose for the fall issue, but whatever, I love this season. Thanks to Kwame Opoku-Duku (@kwamethethird) for originally posting these images on IG. 

And be sure to get the issue to check out new work by Emma Bolden, Christopher Citro, fellow Hampshire alum GennaRose Nethercott, & others. Many thanks to the editors, in particular Poetry Editors Deb Gorlin and Ellen Dore Watson, and Managing Editor Emily Wojcik. 

You can get the print issue here and also read my poem online over on the Mass Review website (more online content is available, as well). 

[chenchenwrites]

& this poem, “why some people be mad at me sometimes,” by Lucille Clifton

[chenchenwrites]

I missed the printversary of my first chapbook! Gosh. Set the Garden on Fire was published by Porkbelly Press on Sept. 7, 2015. I think you can still get copies over here. Many thanks to Porkbelly Press and Nicci Mechler for believing in this little collection. And those cleavers on the cover! Mhm. Happy bday, first chapbook! 

[chenchenwrites]

Pics (mostly taken by Rigoberto González! thank you!) from Saturday night’s beautiful Patron Circle Dinner, honoring those who have donated most generously to Kundiman. 

Thanks to Cathy Linh Che for inviting me to share some poems & a testimonial about Kundiman’s life-changing impact. &: my love & my thank you, Cathy for all that you do as Kundiman’s heart-building Executive Director!! 

Love & thanks to Kyle Lucia Wu, Programs & Communications Director, for all that you make happen. 

Love & thanks to Sarah Gambito (happy bday!!) & Joseph O. Legaspi, co-founders & true wise magic-makers, for your vision & labor. 

Love & thanks to members of the Junior Board—so good to meet you. 

Love & thanks to Allison Albino for opening up her home & cooking so much glorious deliciousness!! 

& big thanks to Joseph for hosting me over the weekend. So sad I got sick & couldn’t be a more fun houseguest! But glad, glad, glad I got to be a part of this night.

&: 

[posted this on Twitter, but want to keep a record of it here] 

ask: where are you needed? how can you be an elder, now?

i don't believe in graduation, i believe in rite of passage.

people meet me and i'm such a nice person but my poems are so RUDE.

we're writing into a future my son can live in.

—Sarah Gambito, at a Kundiman gathering

[chenchenwrites]

I was very bad at taking pics during my New York City trip last week. But I had a wonderful time “going to bat” (is that the term??) for Team Red at the Poetry World Series, a bookend event for the Brooklyn Book Festival. So glad to be on a team with Tomás Q. Morín & Erika Meitner (we won!!). Had a blast “competing” against Team Blue—Adrian Matejka, Erika L. Sánchez, & Melissa Stein. Many thanks to our esteemed umpires Patricia Smith & Mark Doty. So much applause for our outstanding emcee (referee? idk) Mahogany L. Browne. 

&: 

The second photo here is of a sheep in a brunch place I went to with Carly Joy Miller (thank you for hosting me and everything!!), Eloisa Amezcua, & Kyle Dacuyan. Yep, didn’t take a pic of any of us but did take a pic of this sheep. 

[chenchenwrites]

Thanks to Danielle Susi for interviewing me for the Dinnerview feature over at Entropy. Shout-out to Sam Herschel Wein for the duck. You know which duck. And to Jennifer S. Cheng for reminding me of a summertime favorite. And had I answered these questions a little later in the summer, I would've also mentioned Michelle Lin and all the congee <3

[chenchenwrites]

#Repost @nat.brut with @get_repost ・・・ As submissions begin rolling in for Guest Editor Serena Solin’s spring 2019 #poetry folio, Beautiful Open Prairie, we’re revisiting some of our favorite poems from past folios. Our very first was with the brilliant #poet & critic @y_a_n_y_i, whose exemplary #Queer / #Trans / #Asian Folio is something to behold. Take a moment today with @chenchenwrites’s devastating contribution to our inaugural folio. Link in bio. 📚

[chenchenwrites]

So excited to do this reading at Brandeis later this month! Boston area folks: hope to see you there. & thanks to Leah Steele for the poster design.

[chenchenwrites]

No matter the form, Chen Chen’s voice is at once playful and somber, and always revelatory.

Thanks to Abriana Jetté for writing about three key poems from my book in this perceptive essay on Stay Thirsty, also featuring work by Nancy Reddy and Jan Verberkmoes.

[chenchenwrites]

Thanks to everyone who’s already shared this. And many thanks to Jesse Lichtenstein for writing so generously about my book in this article for the September issue of The Atlantic. 

Amazing to see my face in this illustration/collage by Eleanor Shakespeare, and along with Aziza Barnes and Layli Long Soldier (also featured in the article). I do feel like “How Poetry Came to Matter Again” is a reductive title—poetry has always mattered! Maybe poetry matters differently now, maybe poetry matters in different ways in different eras or for different generations. 

Titling aside, though, I think this essay offers some insightful readings of work by poets I really admire—yes, some close readings of particular poems! In a mainstream publication! Also incredible for my work to be introduced here in the context of some important ideas from Carl Phillips when it comes to identity and writing. You can read the full article in the print mag or online.