Breathing Space

In Breathing Space, Ching-In Chen offers their readers a new approach to poetry. Chen writes about epistemologies that shape their own relationship to poetry. In an anecdotal and charismatic approach, Chen provides the reader with step-by-step guides to changing their understanding of the layout of a page or a line or the words within. “My teacher, Juan Felipe Herrera, revealed to his students how poetry could encompass many worlds at once,” Chen says, before providing examples of their own poetry which does exactly that. Chen connects their own ideas to widely shared experiences, like the pandemic, striking each reader in a personal way. Breathing Space seeks to teach an innately human approach to both writing and understanding poetry.