American poet Chen Chen

I'm not a religious person but God sent an angel. One of his least qualified, though. Fluent only in Lemme get back to you. The angel sounded like me, early twenties, unpaid interning. Proficient in fetching coffee, sending super vague emails. It got so bad God personally had to speak to me. This was annoying because I'm not a religious person. I thought I'd made this clear to God by reading Harry Potter & not attending church except for gay weddings. God did not listen to me. God is not a good listener. That's from the multi award winning 2017 debut collection by visiting US poet Chen Chen called When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, The gay Chinese-American writer and teacher has made a list of "Ten Poets Who Will Change the World" and his work has been translated into several languages. He talks to Lynn Freeman about his life and work. Chen Chen is talking at the Verb Festival in Wellington on Saturday at Tu Auaha. His session's called Further Possibilies.