Description
Book SynopsisWhat 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.
Trade ReviewChen 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 *
Table of ContentsI A Favorite Room 13 Summer [I have a...] 14 Doctor’s Note 15 Higher Education 16 Summer [You are the...] 17 The School of Australia 18 Items May Have Shifted 20 The School of Morning & Letters 23 The School of Fury 25 Winter [The grackles flap...] 27 The School of Your Book / Letter to Jennifer S. Cheng 29 Study Abroad 31 we’ll be gone after these brief messages 33 II Winter [Big smelly bowel...] 37 The School of Red 39 a small book of questions: chapter i 40 The School of More School 44 & then a student stands up, says, Are you serious? 45 a small book of questions: chapter ii 47 Winter [You become increasingly...] 49 Elegy While Listening to a Song I Can’t Help But Start to Move to 50 a small book of questions: chapter iii 53 a small book of questions: chapter iv 54 a small book of questions: chapter v 56 One Year Later: A Letter 57 Summer [Your emergency contact...] 61 a small book of questions: chapter vi 62 a small book of questions: chapter vii 65 The School of Logic 67 The School of a Few or a Lot of My Favorite Things 69 a small book of questions: chapter viii 72 III Origin Story 75 Winter [It’s April. But...] 77 In the World’s Italianest Restaurant 82 Summer [The sunflowers fall...] 85 Things the Grackles Bring 89 After My White Friend Says So Cool Upon Hearing Me Speak Chinese... 90 Every Poem Is My Most Asian Poem 91 I am reminded via email to resubmit my preferences for the schedule 92 four short essays personifying a future in which white supremacy has ended 95 Chen No Middle Name Chen 98 The School of Song, Uno, & Dinnertime 99 One Year Later: Her Answer 102 The School of Keyboards & Our Whole Entire History Up to the Present 103 Autumn 106 IV I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party 111 ode to my beloveds & brevities 113 我疼你 115 The School of Night & Hyphens 119 Ode to Rereading Rimbaud in Lubbock, Texas 120 The School of You 122 Zombie Kindnesses 125 Lunar New Year 127 Spring 128 The School of Eternities 129 Spring Summer Autumn Winter 134 The School of the Unschoolable 136 The School of Joy / Letter to Michelle Lin 138 * Notes 144 Acknowledgments 145
