The Last Poem

At our festival, the last poem of the day is a moment shared between all the participants and audience members present that day. Throughout the entire festival venue, we signal the end of the day with The Last Poem, a moment in which everyone’s attention is shifted towards the final moment of the day. The honor of The Last Poem on the Friday of the festival is reserved for Victoria Chang!

Victoria Chang is an American writer, critic, editor and poet.
She writes poetry that is both personal and hard-hitting in how candidly she describes what it means to be a second-generation immigrant, growing up in western society. Chang explores the gaze on Asian women in the United States and brings her poetry to life through rhythmic performances. She is inspired by art, which she skillfully and beautifully interweaves with the contemporary stories she tells.
This is apparent in her poetry collection Barbie Chang (2017), in which she bends cultural objects and phenomena to her own will. Chang’s poetry book OBIT (2020) explores the cultural impact of death on the living. The collection won three awards, one of which was the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was also named Best Book of the Year by several publications. Her first children’s book Is Mommy? was published in 2015 and was cited as a Notable Book by the New York Times. She also wrote the nonfiction book Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence and Grief (2021) and the anthology Asian American poetry: the next generation (2004). She is currently serving as the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and as the Director of Poetry@Tech.