birthdays - Paperback

The sixth poetry collection from Chiwan Choi, birthdays consists of poems written between the summer of 2025, when he was able to join his family for both of his parents' birthdays in Los Angeles, with his father's possibly being his final one due to the return of his cancer, and January of 2026, on his wife's birthday, as his marriage was coming to an end. It was his return to a voice that he recognizes from when he first started writing poems in high school, a time when he was so desperate to survive, when he first started feeling the immense symptoms of loneliness and depression, something that wouldn't be diagnosed for another 30 years. More, and less, than poetry, birthdays is a live recording of a life that was being stripped away, reshaping itself and changing so drastically, whether he was ready or not.