In Tree of Knowledge, acclaimed poet Victoria Chang brings together art, memory, language, and loss in a striking collection shaped by the images that stay with us.

The collection begins with the cutting down of a eucalyptus tree on Chang’s street. As its branches are removed and the tree disappears, the moment continues to haunt her, resurfacing throughout poems that explore grief, selfhood, history, and the complicated ways we remember what has been lost.

Chang also turns her attention to visual art and the work of artists including Pablo Picasso, Joan Mitchell, and Hilma af Klint. Trees, branches, fingertips, figures, and everyday objects appear and reappear across the collection, creating connections between personal memory and the wider histories captured through art.

Evocative, intelligent, and deeply moving, Tree of Knowledge is a distinctive collection about absence and remembrance, and the people, places, and images that continue to shape us long after they are gone.