Back Draft: Victoria Chang

Victoria Chang’s poetry finds vitality in the past while re-imagining what’s ahead of us. Her current manuscript-in-progress, recently honored with the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, features a series of obituary-style poems.

I was curious to know: how does she revise these? Isn’t an obit defined by its finality? Our conversation touched on mortality, generational difference, and how the loss of a parent can transform a writer’s whole worldview. She also admitted that her own kids don’t care about poetry—and that she thinks that’s a great thing.

—Ben Purkert for Guernica

Guernica: What made you write these obituary poems in the first place?

My mom had been sick for so long that I didn’t even realize that I had been grieving