Victoria Chang probes life, death, and uncertainty in With My Back to the World, a collection of poetry which weaves the work of Agnes Martin and On Kawara with verse and mark-making. Several of the poems in Victoria’s latest release are mirrored with an occluded rendering of the work. Elisabeth Sweet asks Victoria a few opening questions about the visualizations which accompany the poems. 

With My Back to the World (cover)

Elisabeth Sweet: Where did the motivation for the poem visualizations come from? Was there a poem or one of Agnes’ paintings in particular that catalyzed the creative undertaking of these accompanying works?

Victoria Chang: Once I finished writing the poems in conversation with Agnes Martin and On Kawara’s artwork and writings, I didn’t feel truly “finished” conversing with these artists. I had an impulse to occlude the poems themselves, I’m not sure why, but perhaps because ultimately language feels inadequate to me to get at some of the things I was exploring in my poems. Perhaps mark-making through language wasn’t enough so I began to mark-make more in Martin and Kawara’s language which were more like strokes.

“Untitled #5, 1998” by Victoria Chang

“Happiness (from Innocent Love Series, 1999)” by Victoria Chang

“Perfect Happiness (from Innocent Love Series, 1999)” by Victoria Chang

E: Lines create a sense of security and expectation that allow minds and bodies to move and express freely within recognized boundaries. Later in life, Agnes spoke of living “above the line” always and not going “below the line for anything,” which you quote directly in “Perfect Happiness (from Innocent Love Series, 1999).” Yet, it seems that in life some lines are meant to be crossed, or at the very least examined from different sides in order to live at all. Throughout the process of writing this book and creating the poem visualizations, did you feel as though you were crossing lines, either self-established or imposed by others, even Agnes?

V: I think what Agnes Martin is saying is that she was at a different place when making those pieces such as “Perfect Happiness.” I’m not sure if the lines move or we move or both, but nothing is ever static. I think Martin’s work shows this transformation. For example, I think while I was writing the book, I was definitely below the line, to use Martin’s terminology. But years later, I am currently “above the line,” and perhaps working on that book helped shift my psyche above the line.

from “Today” by Victoria Chang

E: Can you tell us a bit about the process and intent behind redacting certain days in the visualizations for “Today” (Jan.8.2022, Jan.22.2022, Feb.6.2022)? Does redaction signal a heavier weight felt on those days or perhaps suggest events or experiences more private occurred? I cannot help but notice that on Feb.17.2022 the word “blossoms” burst through the dark.

V: I’m not sure, honestly. I think your guess is a good one. I think the act of erasure is the continued exploration of the inadequacies of language, like I mentioned above, perhaps a way of saying language is insufficient in the end, but perhaps the process was important for exploring some of the more difficult emotions I was exploring such as sadness, grief, mortality.

– – –

Victoria Chang’s most recent book of poems is With My Back to the World, published in 2024 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the U.S. and Corsair/Little Brown in the U.K. It received the Forward Prize in Poetry for Best Collection. A few of her other books include The Trees Witness Everything, OBIT, and Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief. She has written several children’s books as well. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Chowdhury International Prize in Literature, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She is the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and Director of Poetry@Tech.

theVERSEverse has curated Victoria’s work into two seminal exhibitions: POÈME SBJKT, an exhibition of literary arts held in Paris at Librairie Métamorphoses, and FeralVerse, the first exhibition of poetry on Feral File. in POÈME SBJKT, Victoria showed “2022 #1” her collaboration with Dianna Frid, a work which emerged from Victoria + Dianna’s shared interest in the obituary form and its potentials. the physical manifestation exhibited in Paris while digitized + minted versions of the work can be found on objkt: “2022 #1, Folio 1“, “2022 #1, Folio 2“, “2022 #1, Folio 3“. in FeralVerse, our team invited Alexandra Crouwers to visually + sonically interpret Victoria’s poem “Some Last Questions” which you can watch here.

Elisabeth Sweet is a poet exploring patterns of randomness whose work has been exhibited in Berlin, New York, and Paris. She is a core member of theVERSEverse, leading communications and conversations with poets + artists breaking ground in the digital. find her on socials @speciesofvalue.