ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Derek Chan is an MFA graduate of Cornell University, where he was a university fellow, an editor of EPOCH journal, and a two-time recipient of the Corson-Browning Poetry Prize. Additionally, he holds a First-Class Honors in Literary Studies from Monash University, where he received the Arthur Brown Thesis Prize. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in New England Review, Best of Australian Poems, Oxford Poetry, The Margins, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for the 2024 Forward Prize, the 2025 Tin House residency, and he has been nominated for Best New Poets. He has also received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, and has been recognized for awards by Adroit Journal, Frontier Poetry, and Palette Poetry. He is currently a lecturer at Cornell University, where he teaches creative writing and academic composition.
Also by Derek Chan:
A Craft Talk on the Praxis of an August Evening
My father who could hold seven plates on his arms
Fieldwork
July 16, 2025
Inheritance
A child draws a hole on the page
and is suddenly afraid.
Winter shudders like a wing in a box,
then flies into a bush
and can no longer be seen.
Is there terror then, in finding
what isn’t there
is what you'll always have?
The hole hangs from the ceiling
of the page like a reckless idea;
a black bulb of light
goes off, goes off. What does it mean
to understand a hole?
To abandon the general principles
of dirt and allow the deer
to nibble away all the heart
-shaped leaves? The roses explode
slowly inside your head
in either despair or articulation.
But already, some hand in the future
picks up a cylinder of pain, not knowing,
until then, what to write of your life—
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published weekly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
