Tree of Knowledge

Chang changes the way readers see art, the world, and themselves in this contemplative epic that rivals the major works of Wallace Stevens and A. R. Ammons * Library Journal, *Starred Review* *
Chang's latest collection continues her engagement with visual art [...] creating space for Chang to meditate on language, grief and our relationship to history. The poems are haunted by the image of a eucalyptus tree cut down on the poet's street, leaving a poignant absence . . . Evocative * Guardian *
Illustrated with embroidered photo collages, the ambitious latest from Chang delivers an incisive midlife meditation on history, nature, and art . . . Readers will revel in the exquisite balance achieved by each poem. This is a work of rapture and hard-won revelation. * Publisher's Weekly (starred review) *
These poems, aesthetically satisfying and engaging throughout, succeed by refining rather than foregoing Chang's favoured strategies, particularly a penchant for ekphrasis, paradox and syntactic randomness . . . The collection as a whole develops a distinct outlook on tragedy and grieving, one which seeks to bind individual and collective sorrows together in new and disconcerting ways. * The London Magazine *
Victoria Chang's poetry is transcendent; it doesn't observe and identify social and environmental injustices so much as it travels past them to gaze at the world where such things originate ... As a kind of cartographer, [Chang] explores and then returns to bear witness to a place wholly unknown to us, but visible, just beyond the ranges of bitterness, rage, hatred, and shame -- Rick Bass
Stunning . . . The bar is raised again. Chang is, for my money, one of the best practitioners of ekphrasis today [and Tree of Knowledge] takes Chang's engagement with visual art to a new, richer level . . . An impressive collection . . . That Chang's poems are both humane and imbued with a deep philosophical quality is a rare feat -- Rishi Dastidar, Telegraph * 'Best poetry books of 2026' *