Sarah Howe

Sarah Howe (born 1983) is a Chinese–British poet, editor and researcher in English literature. Her first full poetry collection, Loop of Jade, won the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Sunday Times / Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of The Year Award. It is the first time that the T. S. Eliot Prize has been given to a debut collection.[1]

Biography

Howe was born in 1983 in Hong Kong. Her father is English; her mother was born in China, but left the country in 1949 for Hong Kong. The family moved to the UK in 1991, when Howe was aged seven.[2][3][4][5] Her first degree was in English at Christ's College, University of Cambridge, matriculating in 2001. She subsequently gained a PhD at that college; her thesis is entitled "Literature and the Visual Imagination in Renaissance England, 1580–1620".[6][7] During her studies, she spent a year at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, with a Kennedy Scholarship; it was there that she began to write poetry seriously at the age of around 21.[4][7][8] She is currently a Leverhulme Fellow in English at University College London.

She spent five years as a research fellow at the Faculty of English and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, until 2015.[7][9] Her research there was in the area of 16th- and 17th-century English literature; her interests included relationships between poetry and visual art forms, including sculpture and architecture.[7] In 2014, Howe founded the online poetry journal Prac Crit, and she continues to serve as one of its editors.[10][11]

In 2015–16, she is the Frieda L. Miller Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study of Harvard University, where she is focusing on writing poetry.[2][4][12] She is one of the judges of the 2015 National Poetry Competition of The Poetry Society.[10]

Poetry

Howe's first poetry chapbook or pamphlet, A Certain Chinese Encyclopedia, was published by Tall Lighthouse in 2009.[13] It won a 2010 Eric Gregory Trust Fund Award for poets under 30.[14]

Her first collection, Loop of Jade, was published by Chatto & Windus in 2015.[2] It explores Howe's British and Chinese heritage,[3] and in particular her mother's history as an abandoned female baby in China.[15] The main sequence of poems is inspired by Jorge Luis Borges's fictional encyclopedia, The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge.[16][17]

The collection won the 2015 T. S. Eliot Prize[1][18] – the first time this award has been given to a debut collection[1] – as well as the 2015 Sunday Times / Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of The Year Award.[3] It was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.[19] Loop of Jade was described by T. S. Eliot Prize chair Pascale Petit as "absolutely amazing"; Petit predicted that Howe's creative use of form would "change British poetry."[18] Andrew Holgate, literary editor of The Sunday Times, describes Loop of Jade as "a work of astonishing originality, depth and scope."[3]

As of 2015–16, Howe is working on a sequence called Two Systems, which examines China's interaction with the West and the recent history of Hong Kong, in particular the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement. The work uses techniques that include the incorporation of found documents, such as the constitution of Hong Kong, reworked by erasing material.[8][12]

Her poetry has appeared in several anthologies, including three editions of The Best British Poetry (Salt), Dear World & Everyone In It: New Poetry in the UK (Bloodaxe; 2013) and Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe; 2014).[4][12][16] Her sonnet "Relativity", commissioned for the 2015 National Poetry Day, was recorded by physicist Stephen Hawking, also a fellow of Gonville and Caius College. His book A Brief History of Time had inspired Howe as a teenager.[3][20][21]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Debut collection scoops T S Eliot Prize, Poetry Book Society, retrieved 13 January 2016
  2. 1 2 3 Sarah Howe – Biography, retrieved 12 January 2016
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 2015 Winner, Sunday Times / Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of The Year, retrieved 12 January 2016
  4. 1 2 3 4 Sarah Howe, Forward Arts Foundation, retrieved 12 January 2016
  5. ↑ Sarah Howe (12 August 2013), "I. To China: That Blue Flower on the Map", Best American Poetry, retrieved 13 January 2016
  6. ↑ Sarah Howe (m 2001), Young Writer of the Year, Christ's College, Cambridge, retrieved 12 January 2016
  7. 1 2 3 4 Dr Sarah Howe, Gonville and Caius, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, retrieved 12 January 2016
  8. 1 2 Mark Reynolds, "Sarah Howe: Remaking memory", bookanista.com, retrieved 13 January 2016
  9. ↑ Prestigious award for Caian poet, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, retrieved 12 January 2016
  10. 1 2 "Judges", National Poetry Competition, The Poetry Society, retrieved 12 January 2016
  11. ↑ Prac Crit: About, retrieved 12 January 2016
  12. 1 2 3 Sarah Howe, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, retrieved 12 January 2016
  13. ↑ Sarah Howe – Pamphlet, retrieved 12 January 2016
  14. ↑ The Eric Gregory Trust Fund Awards: Past Winners, retrieved 12 January 2016
  15. ↑ Alison Flood, "Poet Sarah Howe named young writer of the year", The Guardian, retrieved 12 January 2016
  16. 1 2 Kate Potts (23 July 2015), Sarah Howe, Poetry International Rotterdam, retrieved 12 January 2016
  17. ↑ George Jackson (31 July 2015), "Review: Loop of Jade – Sarah Howe", Ambit
  18. 1 2 Brown M (11 January 2016), "TS Eliot prize: poet Sarah Howe wins with 'amazing' debut", The Guardian, retrieved 12 January 2016
  19. ↑ Sarah Shaffi (8 June 2015), "Forward Prizes shortlists revealed", The Bookseller, retrieved 13 January 2016
  20. ↑ National Poetry Day 2015: Light, retrieved 12 January 2016
  21. ↑ Sarah Howe (8 October 2015), "On "Relativity"", The Paris Review, retrieved 12 January 2016

External links

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