BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — During a visit to Bloomington-Normal, American poet and writer Victoria Chang will share her creative process with the Illinois Wesleyan community on Wednesday, April 23.
At 4 p.m. on Wednesday in The Ames Library’s Beckman Auditorium, Chang will be in conversation with Michael Theune, IWU’s Robert Harrington Endowed Professor of English and Chair of English. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Chang will read her work at the Normal Theater in Uptown Normal with a book signing to follow. Both events are free and open to the public.
“Victoria Chang is among today’s most innovative poets,” said Theune. “In book after book, she takes on large scale projects that are formally accomplished, but that also have intense emotion at their core.”
In her book of poems titled “OBIT,” Theune said Change uses the form of the newspaper obituary to process the range of losses that Chang experienced after her mother’s death. In her latest book, “With My Back to the World,” Theune said Chang speaks openly of depression while using the “often tightly controlled” visual art of Agnes Martin to convey the message.
“The poet Emily Dickenson writes, ‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes.’ Chang’s word stunningly embodies this idea,” said Theune.
During Chang’s conversation with Theune, a Q&A session will give guests the opportunity to go behind the scenes to explore Chang’s artistic process.
“Of course, this event is also designed to whet the appetites of those in attendance, tuning their attention for fuller receptivity, preparing them for the evening’s poetry reading (at the Normal Theater),” said Theune.
Chang has earned several awards for her work, including the Forward Prize for Best Collection of Poetry, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry and the PEN/Voelcker Award. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Chowdhury Prize in Literature. Chang serves as the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and as the Director of Poetry@Tech. She studied Asian studies at the University of Michigan and earned a master’s in Asian studies from Harvard.
For several years, Illinois Wesleyan’s Department of English has partnered with Illinois State University’s Department of English, Publications Unit and Spoon River Poetry Review to bring some of America’s most prominent poets to Bloomington-Normal.
“So far, this series has included much-lauded poets Claudia Rankine and John Keene. It is the English department’s great pleasure to continue to support this series in order to bring to the area another significant voice in contemporary American poetry,” said Theune.