Sam Roxas-Chua

Sam Roxas-Chua is the author of Saying Your Name Three Times Underwater, Echolalia in Script, and Fawn Language. His poems, artworks, and asemic writings have appeared in journals including Narrative, December Magazine, Cream City Review and an essay/review of his two recent books appears in the Georgia Review and Rhino Poetry. His poetry sequence Diary of Collected Summers was awarded the Missouri Review’s Miller Audio Prize and most recently he was interviewed by Gulf Coast Journal.

In his writing process, Sam is interested in discovering the invisible poem. These are images and thoughts conjured up by asemic or open-form writing, a writing practice using non-sensical script. Here’s how he described it in an interview: “In between stanzas of a poem, or when I can’t quite get to an image or a phrase, I pull out a piece of paper and start writing this nonsensical script. When I do this script and feel the texture of my wrist on the page, images open like a deck of cards.” Eventually, this work became an art form on its own for Sam, one that exists in conversation with his poetry. His books talk to each other across mediums as well, with the poems in Saying Your Name Three Times Underwater resurfacing in the poem that concludes Echolalia in Script, which is made up of phrases drawn from the poems in that book, making a new thing. And each visual art piece in Echolalia is, in turn, in conversation with a line from that work.

Sam is a poet, multimedia artist, transracial/transcultural adoptee. He has exhibited his visual works, read for PEN International, and has appeared in literary radio shows. His current project is an 8-week artist/writer residency at Portland Chinatown Museum.

Location: FMH 302

NOTE: This is an in-person event. We ask that all attendees be vaccinated and wear a mask.