Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency

Sept. 13, 2022

out now from BOA Editions
& from Bloodaxe Books (UK: Oct. 20, 2022)

What 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 investigation 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. Working, always working in the wrecked heart of this new collection is a switchboard operator, picking up and connecting calls. Raucous 2 a.m. prank calls. Whispered-in-a-classroom emergency calls. And sometimes, its pages record the dropping of a call, a failure or refusal to pick up. With irrepressible humor and play, 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 categorizations and pat answers. Instead, the book offers an insatiable curiosity about how it is we keep finding ways to hold onto one another.

Get the UK edition (Bloodaxe Books).

Praise

2023 Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize finalist * 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award finalist * 2023 Notable Book for the American Library Association’s Reference and User Services Association * A “Best of 2022” poetry book according to the Boston Globe, the Smithsonian Magazine, Electric Lit, Book Riot, & LitBowl * Featured on NPR’s “Books We Love” * A Publishers Weekly TOP 10 Poetry Book for Fall 2022 * 10 of the Best LGBTQ+ Books to Read This Fall at Them * 15 New and Forthcoming Collections to Read for National Poetry Month at Shondaland * An Asian American Poetry Companion: Cozy Books For Fall at Lantern Review

“With humor, deep intelligence, and what feels to me like a luminous everyday philosophy, Chen Chen leads me ‘through the wound of it.’ It being life. In America. In the 21st Century. In a body touched by violence and care, grief and desire, hope and heavy knowledge. Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency is dolorous, riotous, rapturous.” —Tracy K. Smith, author of Wade in the Water

“Chen Chen is one of my favorite poets writing today. His intuitive sense of humor makes me laugh out loud while reading his poems which brim with pathos. Humor cross-sections a heart, coating it with laughter while also ripping it in half. Parents, higher education, Sarah McLachlan, ice cream sandwiches, Backstreet Boys, all transform in Chen's poems to become the props that they always were. I also love how Chen's poems pay homage to other Asian American poets—Bhanu Kapil, Jennifer S. Cheng, Justin Chin, Marilyn Chin, and more. Whether he is writing about his partner, his mother, his dog, racism, the pastoral, homophobia, or academia, Chen continually reminds us how he has the writing skills to subvert everything, even himself. With long-lined poems, prose poems, tercets, and more, here is a poet who isn't afraid to become fluent in forms. Ultimately, Chen's poems are honest, without the performative film that layers so much today, and his poems leave me speechless and transformed.” —Victoria Chang, author of Obit

“These poems can do so much, they can tell you, for example, ‘what bees wear at night / when they want to feel sexy,’ these poems can be hilarious, even when grieving. These poems remember they are written in the late empire, inside this grief that is America of the early 2020s, and somehow these poems also console with all the things that grackles bring. Anyone who has a boyfriend or a mother should read these poems. Anyone who’s ever been made uncomfortable in this country in public or in private should read them, too. Anyone who likes to laugh out loud and then realize that they have learned something far more than a joke: that they are wiser from reading the lines: read these poems. Chen Chen is as real as poets can be.” —Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic

“The vibrant second collection from Chen (When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities) wonders aloud at how to make a place in a world where people and institutions strain under the weight of impossible expectations. In one poem, Chen imagines his father emigrating from the U.S. to Australia, where he “will toss out a dog-eared copy / of the manual he received upon arriving in America— / How to Have Deeply Sorrowful Exchanges // With Your Son About Your Immigrant Hardships: / How to Make Him Understand He Must Become / a Neurosurgeon / At Least a Dentist.” Chen’s humor and curiosity shine in poems that experiment with form and content, asking, “why do only successes get to be// smashing, why not a smashing/ failure!” The collection suggests that it is humanity’s flawed nature, its failings, and its frequently impossible desires that make life meaningful; in Chen’s words, “If we could love perfectly, there would be no need to love. If we could finish grieving, there would be no need to live.” These questioning, funny, and deeply humane poems pack a fantastic punch. —Publishers Weekly ★ 

“Chen Chen’s second collection displays his signature blend of humour and pathos set against a backdrop of the Trump presidency and the twin pandemics of Covid-19 and Covid racism. To be Asian American, Chen intimates, is to be taken ‘through the wound of it’. Throughout the collection, death, crisis and grief sit cheek by jowl with survival, resistance and glimpses of hard-won joy. In Summer, the speaker’s wellbeing hinges on a fragile object in the face of impending loss: ‘I have a canoe that gives me therapy my insurance won’t cover. The man I love calls from Colorado, unaware of my canoe. / It offers a better kind of cognitive behavioural, in very turquoise water. / The man says his mother is dying & I say I know but nothing is clear.’ The seasons serve as a recurring metaphor, signifying an unyielding desire for wonder despite the collective trauma pervading the American body politic. In the book’s final epistolary poem, Chen writes: ‘You wrote / that I write with joy. / When really it’s toward, / walking to / the school of / try again.’ With its exquisite blend of melancholy and exuberance, this is a life-affirming book for our troubled times.” —Mary Jean Chan, The Guardian

“Chen Chen’s newest book is a sparkling new world that buzzes with conversation and teems with tender moments. As the title suggests, this book calls upon distant friends and loved ones and offers us a framework for joy and grief during an emergency. This book is a celebration and investigation of queer Asian American identity, looking thoughtfully into the past while trying to make sense of uncertain futures. Reading Chen’s newest book is like entering a warm room full of laughter after months of silence. This collection welcomes the ache of your loneliness while reminding you that there’s a party going on in the next room, whenever you’re ready to walk through the doors.” —Misha Ponnuraju, Foglifter

“The poems of Chen Chen’s debut collection When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities possessed the color and intimacy of late-night gossip. Nothing seemed off limits: There were porn stars, superheroes, Kafka references, sometimes all within the same poem. Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency feels even more vibrantly absurd. Written in part during the pandemic, the collection explores Chen’s strained family relationships as he embraces a more independent life with his partner, as well as the increasing rise in anti-Asian racism. Its sorrows feel more profound, but its laughter becomes more hard-won, more hopeful as a result. This is a book that asks, with all sincerity, ‘What makes poop more pungent on certain days?’, embracing the small wonders that lie at the center of our world. Despite the personal and political problems that weigh down on him, Chen attempts to write ‘toward [joy], / walking to / the school of // try again.’ ” —Austin Nguyen, Electric Lit

“Chen Chen’s eagerly anticipated sophomore collection has all the frenetic energy of his blockbuster debut, with perhaps a touch of new urgency, evidence of the calamities of the last few years. Chen revels in queer American culture while also crying out ‘about how painful this world has made our living – / as well as how hot & mustachioed.’ I revel in Chen’s capaciousness, his lightning-fast modulations between silly and sober, his capacity to make poetry that is no less serious for being fun.” —Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR, “Books We Love - 2022”

“This book of poems reminded me that poetry is also a craft. Word by word, and line by line, Chen Chen shows how poetry is made. Each poem brims with the intimate presence of the poet. Touching on a wide range of subjects, Chen shares his impressions and imaginings as a queer Asian American in this contemporary moment. The poems navigate the violence of racism, xenophobia and homophobia; linger in the fraught emotions of relationships; and release tension with playful pop culture references. I admire Chen’s skillful way with words and how they simultaneously provoke strong feelings and provide good company.” —Mary Savig, Smithsonian Magazine, “Smithsonian Scholars Pick Their Favorite Books of 2022”

“Interrogating the self, queerness, being a person of color, and much more, these works will stand the test of time, bringing a new queer voice to center stage… Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency is a vibrant, powerful collection of ruminations on race, queerness, and romantic love, but it is also an exploration of identity—the story of a son trying to find his way back to his mother after a schism, a set of love poems to a boyfriend who has been deeply supportive, and a meditation on what it means to be an immigrant, or other, in America.. It is also an experiment with new forms and represents a departure from his earlier work, which should be acknowledged and celebrated—because if we’re not growing, we’re stagnating. Chen Chen has grown considerably, and he is blossoming in this new collection.” —Joanna Acevedo, West Trade Review

“ ‘You are the ice cream sandwich connoisseur of your generation,’ says the speaker, of himself, in Chen Chen’s second collection, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency. With his raffish attraction to ‘floral shorteralls,’ ‘deeply pink fanny pack,’ and ‘branded touchless experiences,’ the speaker, who goes by the author’s own name, feels like a hard-earned construct, a neon-bright, pop-consumerist confection surrounding a chilled core of outrage over the bigotry, homophobia, and loathing that he encounters… Chen’s ice cream sandwich connoisseur is inseparable from his indignant, queer, Asian poet: both arise from a maximalist sensibility… that ironically expresses the difficulty of self-acceptance through audacious assertions of pride in his identities.” —David Woo, Harriet Books, Poetry Foundation

“Chen Chen finally has a new book coming out, and we can all rejoice! His 2017 full-length debut, When I Grow Up…, remains a popular book for its emotional resonance, perfectly timed humor, and how the mundane intersects with the big moments of life. It was also longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award, among other accolades. In Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, Chen brings his signature playfulness and perspective as a queer Asian American to the realities of life under the Trump administration, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the extreme violence of America.” —Sarah Neilson, Shondaland

“With his newest collection, Chen continues to demonstrate his trademark ability to balance tenderness and wit, crafting a book that is constantly in conversation with itself. The end result is a book that reads like a wonderfully lyrical narrative with a protagonist who must come to terms with himself and, through the process, determine the terms of the relationships that surround him.” —Ronnie K. Stephens, The Poetry Question

“Humour & heartbreak, gorgeous language & brilliant structuring, filled with seasons & mother-pain & queerness—a must-read!” —Jennifer Militello, The Poetry Society (UK)

“Chen Chen traverses a wide ground in Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, past and present, personal and universal, and does so with irreverence to the conventions of didactic poetry and the white western canon. In these past fraught years of Trumpism, the COVID-19 pandemic, and upticks in Asian American violence, Chen approaches such topics head-on, suggesting for artists, during times of turmoil, art proves an imperative… Chen’s poems are richly textured, tender, and often humorous. He writes of ‘smelly bowel movements’ and the Mandarin prose of his mother (in separate poems) with equal care and attention… Ultimately, there is hope. Delicate, fluctuating, but hope nevertheless.” —Malavika Praseed, Chicago Review of Books

“Chen Chen is a queer Asian poet who writes poems about the tension of family, the afterlife of family, when you have to distance yourself because of things like gender violence, homophobia, not being accepted, and have to create a new family for yourself, you know, and I think even that title just alludes to that idea that when you’ve created this new life for yourself and something has happened that’s kind of pulling you back, and that tension, whew! But also, the poems are sexy, really funny. Chen Chen’s work makes me giggle and blush—pretty often, which you know, you actually have to be pretty wild to make me blush, so I think that’s saying something. But then also there’s just this tenderness and sensuality that I love in his writing. So check it out. Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen. It’s naughty.” —Saeed Jones, Vibe Check

“When the world feels fragmented and growing further apart, Chen Chen’s Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency offers someone on the other end of the line. Curious and playful, the poems in this collection explore the families we are born into and those we choose, the stories we inherit and those we invent despite living though a lifetime of emergencies. Examining what it means to be a queer Asian American living through the Trump era, through mass shootings, and during a global pandemic, the poems in this collection are still filled with humor and joy, offering readers a way to celebrate life despite our individual and collective grief.” —Sarah Fawn Montgomery, The Rumpus

“Inviting, funny, ‘trying to be marvelous,’ Chen Chen’s second volume lives up to its provocative title. Long lines and quick-draw paragraphs sketch Chen’s adolescence in Texas, his exasperated response to white supremacy, his love and his resentment for a mother still learning to accept her gay son.” —Stephanie Burt, Boston Globe, “The best books of 2022”

“ ‘is memory the best/ eternity we can make?/ The only?’ These are in fact questions that poets have been asking since the beginning of time. But no one asks them, or answers them, like Chen does: on the way to becoming a Jigglypuff or Wigglytuff, with honey-flavored cough drops, ice cream sandwiches, floral shorteralls, Russian novels—in other words, celebrating the ‘splendiferous’ ephemera of life despite its cruel absurdities. As for emergencies, there’s no way to prepare. It’s like the world suddenly gets overrun by green radioactive cats or property taxes. You go through it, hoping to come out the other side. Better yet, in the throes of an emergency, just kiss the one you love.” —Luisa A. Igloria, RHINO

“Funny and devastating and joyful, this sophomore collection meditates on anger, grief, intimacy, and seasons. It’s long, but in the best ways. Sink into, as the poet writes, “Long Titles” in “After My White Friend Says So Cool Upon Hearing Me Speak Chinese…” In “In the World’s Italianest Restaurant,” crush on the long lines steeped in longing. And stay a little longer in the long poems — for example, “Winter [It’s April. But…]” — that don’t feel long at all. As now as possible, reach for this thick collection teeming with grackles, sunflowers, and music and reach for When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, too.” —Connie Pan, Book Riot, “10 of the Best Poetry Collections of 2022”

“Chen Chen’s much-lauded second collection is precise and timely, exploring what family means as a queer Asian American living through a pandemic, a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, and the legacy of Donald Trump through the inventive figure of a switchboard operator, picking up calls. In Chen’s hands, grief ripples with anger and humor, carving space for an intertwining of emotions that matches his formal versatility. Read his conversation with Austin Nguyen about the politics of grief and making angry art here.” —Electric Literature, “Top 3 Poetry Collections of the Year”

“Humour is often referenced in relation to Chen’s work but I think what makes his poetry so incredible, so unique, is his ability to move through multiple registers—multiple moods—in the space of a single poem. His voice is elastic, his skill remarkable; he can shift from the mundane to the profound blindingly fast and in this way captures the absurdity of life (which steamrolls from joke to tragedy, politics to butt sex without pause) like few others can. Absurdist, sexy and smart, this is a book that has so much to offer. The word I kept returning to was ‘excess’, which I love in literature, and which I only now realise is deeply incorrect. What I love in this book and in literature isn’t excess, but fullness—the sense of a life lived, one that isn’t inhibited by the Victorianesque restraint and modern minimalism which has so blighted the written word for decades. This book is full full full and fucking beautiful.” —Omar Sakr, sakr.substack.com

“This book is a wonder, grafting whimsy and seriousness; the elegiac and comic; the self-deprecatory and sublime. Formally interruptive and tonally subversive, here are poems mapping uncanny alternatives inside queerness, sonhood, confession, and the act of writing itself. Chen Chen’s eclectic logic is alive, breathing, hungry, and horny, as he proclaims ‘we can’t help but continue to make ourselves.’ This is restlessness at its finest.” —Oluwaseun S. Olayiwola, Poetry Book Society (UK)

“Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency is a book of love poems. These poems are dedicated to Chen’s partner Jeff and to himself, to his parents, to queer people, to students, to teachers, to Asian people and all immigrants. A seasonal transformation takes place through the course of the collection. Like a clenched hand opening up, the book moves from a position of anxiety and fear towards a more generous, joyous and silly outlook… Choosing joy is a choice, and it is an effort – it doesn’t come naturally. But to choose joy is to choose life. And so here we are, calling our parents back, wearing our most splendiferous shorteralls, ‘walking to the school of / try again’.” —Helen Bowell, Ink Sweat & Tears (UK)

“This collection kept me company on public transport, at the hairdresser’s and during lunch-breaks, and I never failed to laugh out loud along with Chen’s jokes. A precious, rare occurence for a collection of poems. I say precious as the collection also acts as a kind of time capsule for the years of pandemic …it is a collection of commemoration and record—but one that is uplifting and empowering, and filled with hope. ...The poems tend to have a buoyant quality whether driven by emotions, vivid descriptions or form. There is a momentum of hope within the poems—a movement back and forward, negotiating with this word. …This collection is joyous, and celebratory. …Above all, it is generous.” —SK Grout, The Alchemy Spoon (UK)

“Queer gorgeousness as a radical, political act is… at the heart of Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency. …Chen Chen’s second collection documents the double assault of coming of age in an America, some of whose citizens publicly denigrate Asian Americans, while at home your parents deny and endeavour to change your queerness. …What strengthens Chen to resist and make different are the qualities for which he was persecuted and diminished. From ‘Every Poem Is My Most Asian Poem’, to multiple segments in untranslated Mandarin, to a celebration of his mother’s rocking a three-sweater-look, Chen affirms how where he hails from nourishes and roots him. Aesthetically as well as personally. …he writes out of the life-givingness of queerness. —alice hiller, The Poetry Review (UK)

“Chen Chen’s Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency is a dreamy, nature-infused look at contemporary life. …His eyes take in the world around him in poetry that is lyrical and approachable, inquisitive and warm-hearted. …The very idea that our emergency contact may have problems of their own tells us much about how expansive his interests in the world are. This is poetry that gently pleads for the reader’s understanding of the narrator’s foibles and failings, yet finds time to celebrate the joys of living in the midst of human mistakes. Poetry that celebrates the joy of reading… ” —Nick Schenkel Book Reviews, WBAA

“Chen Chen is one of those poets I’d long been hearing about from numerous others, all of whom have said that his work is required reading; and this collection certainly more than lives up to expectation. …There is a fierce intelligence and open heart on display here, and such a heft to this collection of deeply intimate, engaged and engaging poems. …At turns playful and mournful, his is an investigation of intimate and deeply felt moments, including around his mother, his partner, academia, homophobia and racism, and how it is he chooses to respond, and hold himself accountable to his own actions. …He writes of trauma but one that never overwhelms his awareness of what is beautiful.” —rob mclennan, periodicities : a journal of poetry and poetics

“I picked up Chen’s Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency this spring and cried the whole collection through. This collection is not inherently sad. Rather, it was one of the funniest and most endearing collections I have read in a while. Chen has a gift for infusing his own observations with wit. …To say this collection is my favorite collection of poetry I have ever read is somehow an understatement. …However, I did not cry because of the beauty of Chen’s poetry. I cried because he wrote about queer Texan joy. He noticed the possibility in the queer Texan oxymoron that I had run away from. . …I wish Chen released his poetry book a year earlier. I wish I read it before I left Texas, but I can still reclaim my queer Texan-ness now. At heart, I am a queer Texan. I no longer consider it an oxymoron. …How queer my Texan identity. How complicated and confusing and conflicting. And yet, how beautiful. The most beautiful ice cream sandwich that I am a connoisseur of.” —Shelby Edison, Sunstroke Magazine

“It's been ages since I've read a poetry collection cover to cover, so I'm delighted to report that Chen's latest collection exceeded all my expectations. There's humor and wit and experimentation in spades, but what I think I appreciated most were the various ways Chen pointed me towards other writers as well, naming, quoting, and playing with the work of other Asian American poets and writers throughout. Reading this reminded me of all the reasons I fell in love with (and keep returning to) poetry after all these years.” —Patrick Mullen-Coyoy, The Offing

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

Apr. 11, 2017

BOA Editions

"This is a book I will return to whenever I forget what a poem can do, whenever I am in need of song or hope." —Aracelis Girmay

In this ferocious and tender debut Chen Chen investigates inherited forms of love and family—the strained relationship between a mother and son, the cost of necessary goodbyes—all from Asian American, immigrant, and queer perspectives. Holding all accountable, this collection fully embraces the loss, grief, and abundant joy that come with charting one’s own path in identity, life, and love.

Get the UK edition (Bloodaxe Books, 2019).

Signed copies - currently not taking requests. Please wait until I’ve caught up with orders!

Praise

National Book Award Longlist * Winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) New Writers Award, the Writers’ League of Texas Book Award in Poetry, and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry * Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry Finalist * Stonewall Honor Book in Literature * A "Best of 2017" poetry book, according to The Adroit Journal, The Brooklyn Rail, Buzzfeed Books, Entropy, and Library Journal

“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 (on the UK edition)

“Chen Chen’s When I Grow Up… is a debut collection that cannot be ignored. This collection is by turns comic, dark, self-obsessed, playful, and restless. …This is a book whose narrator is bursting at the seams with energy because he has so much to say. …His strategies of association allow him to say a lot, connect a lot, and feel fresh. These poems are embracing of our human flaws while also turning to the positive connections we make in our lives.” —Judges, GLCA New Writers Award 

“As the title suggests, in Chen’s work the new lyric ‘I’ is open-ended, cumulative, marked by potential. His poems boast the frank ease of a late night Gchat with a bright, emotionally available friend… Chen has an avid eye for everyday details that bridge emotional, domestic, and cultural landscapes. …It’s a bracingly wry meta-reflection on his story of identity—the loving particulars balanced by a dose of filial bitterness. Chen is a rarity among this new cohort of poets.“ —Jesse Lichtenstein, The Atlantic

“Chen balances the politics surrounding shame and desire with hearty doses of joy, humor, and whimsy in his vibrant debut collection. To consider the titular act of growing up—to recognize what potential could mean—Chen must make sense of his past to imagine a better future in his poems… As a gay, Asian-American poet, Chen casts his poems as both a refusal of the shame of sexuality and of centering whiteness or treating it as a highly desirable trait. Readers encounter sharp, delightful turns between poems, as Chen shifts from elegy to ode and back again… Moving between whimsy and sobriety, Chen both exhibits and defies vulnerability—an acute reminder that there are countless further possibilities.” —Publishers Weekly ★ 

“Visually vivid, erotic and intimate, at times bitingly funny, and refreshingly world-observant, Chen’s poems are steeped in the pain of being other as both Asian American and gay… The standout poem ‘First Light’ enumerates many different, often outré ways Chen envisions having come to this country, embodying the kind of imagination it takes to adapt to a new culture. Throughout, there’s ratcheted-up emotion yet an amazing command of language: ‘I carried in my snake mouth a boxful / of carnal autobiographies’ says the world. VERDICT: An A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize winner; expansive work for expansive audiences.” —Library Journal ★ 

“The great feat of Chen's writing is his sustained ability to create vivid images that are at once surreal and relatable, like a fearless mango or friendly tomato. An invitation to breathe air into such starkly vibrant and unfamiliar ideas often requires a certain willingness to engage on the behalf of readers, but Chen makes the choice easy. I have insatiably read this collection over and over again, envisioning new possibilities each time.” —Samuel Cai, NPR’s 2021 “Engaging With Asian American And Pacific Islander Heritage Month: A Reading List”