Chen Chen | Glass Poetry Press

Chen Chen (Gesundheit!) is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, the GLCA New Writers Award, the Texas Book Award for Poetry, and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. Bloodaxe Books will publish the UK edition in 2019. Chen’s work appears in many publications, including Poem-a-Day and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He has taught at Syracuse University and Texas Tech University; currently he is the Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University. He co-founded and co-runs the journal, Underblong. He lives with his partner and their pug dog, Mr. Rupert Giles.

In poetry, I don't feel so attached to the exact details of an event; I'm much more interested in the processes by which remembering happens. I'm fascinated by the ways in which present circumstances and longings for a certain kind of future can shape, reshape memory.

— in conversation with Michelle Tudor, for the Wildness