Description
What happens when everything falls away, when those you call on in times of need are themselves calling out for rescue? In his highly anticipated second collection, Chen Chen continues his exploration of family, both blood and chosen, examining what one inherits and what one invents, as a queer Asian American living through an era of Trump, mass shootings and the COVID-19 pandemic. With unexpected playfulness and irrepressible humour, these anarchic poems celebrate life, despite all that would crush aliveness. Hybrid in form and set in New England, West Texas and a landlocked province of China, among other places, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency refuses neat categorisations and pat answers. Instead, the book offers an insatiable curiosity about how it is we keep finding ways to hold one another. Chen Chen's debut When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities was published in the UK by Bloodaxe in 2019.
About the Author
Chen Chen was born in 1989 in Xiamen, China, and "grew up" in Massachusetts in the US. His first book-length collection, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, US, 2017; Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2019), was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) New Writers Award, the Texas Book Award for Poetry, and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. The book was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and named a Stonewall Honor Book. He had previously published two chapbooks, Kissing the Sphinx (Two of Cups Press, 2016) and Set the Garden on Fire (Porkbelly Press, 2015). His work has been widely acclaimed in the US, with Poets & Writers Magazine featuring him in their Inspiration Issue as one of 'Ten Poets Who Will Change the World'. His second collection, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, is publshed by Bloodaxe Books in the UK and BOA Editions in the US in 2022. He earned his BA from Hampshire College and his MFA from Syracuse University, where he was a University Fellow, and is currently working on a PhD in English and Creative Writing through Texas Tech University as an off-site student and the recipient of a J.T. and Margaret Talkington Fellowship. He edits Underblong with the poet Sam Herschel Wein and serves as a contributing editor for Bettering American Poetry. Chen lives in frequently snowy Rochester, NY, with his partner, Jeff Gilbert and their pug dog, Mr Rupert Giles. He was the 2018-2020 Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Reviews
Chen Chen refuses to be boxed in or nailed down. He is a poet of Whitman's multitudes and of Langston Hughes' blues, of Dickinson's "so cold no fire can warm me" and of Michael Palmer's comic interrogation. What unifies the brilliance of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities is a voice desperate to believe that within every one of life's sadnesses there is also hope, meaning, and - if we are willing to laugh at ourselves - humor. This is a book I wish existed when I first began reading poetry. Chen is a poet I'll be reading for the rest of my life. -- Jericho Brown
Chen Chen's When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities asks how one might find humour, hope and joy amid the tensions that arise from conflicting loyalties. Queer, Asian-American and immigrant experiences collide to inform Chen's sensual and vivid verse which attests to the surreal and dream-like nature of memory... Following in the footsteps of Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg and Frank O'Hara, Chen reaches for the sublime by offering his reader the seemingly quotidian... Chen reminds us in this tender and free-wheeling debut that all relationships are "a feat of engineering", whether with one's country, one's family, or oneself. -- Mary Jean Chan * The Guardian *
A book that is miraculous in all its pain, trauma, and humor... This is a book that is part elegy for the past and part love song for the future. This remarkable debut is hopefully the first of many possibilities to come. -- Victoria Chang * Tupelo Quarterly *
Book Information
ISBN 9781780376233
Author Chen Chen
Format Paperback
Page Count 152
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 335g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 1780mm * 13mm
About the Author
Chen Chen was born in 1989 in Xiamen, China, and "grew up" in Massachusetts in the US. His first book-length collection, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, US, 2017; Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2019), was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) New Writers Award, the Texas Book Award for Poetry, and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. The book was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and named a Stonewall Honor Book. He had previously published two chapbooks, Kissing the Sphinx (Two of Cups Press, 2016) and Set the Garden on Fire (Porkbelly Press, 2015). His work has been widely acclaimed in the US, with Poets & Writers Magazine featuring him in their Inspiration Issue as one of 'Ten Poets Who Will Change the World'. His second collection, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, is publshed by Bloodaxe Books in the UK and BOA Editions in the US in 2022. He earned his BA from Hampshire College and his MFA from Syracuse University, where he was a University Fellow, and is currently working on a PhD in English and Creative Writing through Texas Tech University as an off-site student and the recipient of a J.T. and Margaret Talkington Fellowship. He edits Underblong with the poet Sam Herschel Wein and serves as a contributing editor for Bettering American Poetry. Chen lives in frequently snowy Rochester, NY, with his partner, Jeff Gilbert and their pug dog, Mr Rupert Giles. He was the 2018-2020 Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Reviews
Chen Chen refuses to be boxed in or nailed down. He is a poet of Whitman's multitudes and of Langston Hughes' blues, of Dickinson's "so cold no fire can warm me" and of Michael Palmer's comic interrogation. What unifies the brilliance of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities is a voice desperate to believe that within every one of life's sadnesses there is also hope, meaning, and - if we are willing to laugh at ourselves - humor. This is a book I wish existed when I first began reading poetry. Chen is a poet I'll be reading for the rest of my life. -- Jericho Brown
Chen Chen's When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities asks how one might find humour, hope and joy amid the tensions that arise from conflicting loyalties. Queer, Asian-American and immigrant experiences collide to inform Chen's sensual and vivid verse which attests to the surreal and dream-like nature of memory... Following in the footsteps of Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg and Frank O'Hara, Chen reaches for the sublime by offering his reader the seemingly quotidian... Chen reminds us in this tender and free-wheeling debut that all relationships are "a feat of engineering", whether with one's country, one's family, or oneself. -- Mary Jean Chan * The Guardian *
A book that is miraculous in all its pain, trauma, and humor... This is a book that is part elegy for the past and part love song for the future. This remarkable debut is hopefully the first of many possibilities to come. -- Victoria Chang * Tupelo Quarterly *
Book Information
ISBN 9781780376233
Author Chen Chen
Format Paperback
Page Count 152
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 335g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 1780mm * 13mm
