Sarah Howe (born 1983) is a Chinese-British

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

, editor and researcher in English literature. Her first full poetry collection, '' Loop of Jade'' (2015), 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. She is currently a Leverhulme Fellow in English at

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

, as well as a trustee of The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry.

Biography

Howe was born in 1983 in

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

. 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. Her first degree was in English at

Christ's College, Cambridge Christ's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college includes the Master, the Fellows of the College, and about 450 undergraduate and 250 graduate students. The c ...

, 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". During her studies, she spent a year at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, with a Kennedy Scholarship; it was there that she began to write poetry seriously at the age of around 21. She spent five years as a research fellow at the Faculty of English and

Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Gonville and Caius College, commonly known as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348 by Edmund Gonville, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and ...

, until 2015. 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. In 2014, Howe founded the online poetry journal ''Prac Crit'', and she continues to serve as one of its editors. In 2015–16, she was the Frieda L. Miller Fellow at the

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, also known as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, is an institute of Harvard University that fosters interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts ...

of Harvard University, where she focused on writing poetry. She is one of the judges of the 2015 National Poetry Competition of

The Poetry Society The Poetry Society is a membership organisation, open to all, whose stated aim is "to promote the study, use and enjoyment of poetry". The society was founded in London in February 1909 as the Poetry Recital Society, becoming the Poetry Society ...

Poetry

Howe's first poetry chapbook or pamphlet, ''A Certain Chinese Encyclopedia'', was published by Tall Lighthouse in 2009. It won a 2010 Eric Gregory Trust Fund Award for poets under 30. Howe was selected for The Complete Works mentoring programme in 2012. Her first collection, ''Loop of Jade'', was published by

Chatto & Windus Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Penguin Random House that was formerly an independent book publishing company founded in London in 1855 by John Camden Hotten. Following Hotten's death, the firm would reorganize under the names of his busines ...

in 2015. It explores Howe's British and Chinese heritage, and in particular her mother's history as an abandoned female baby in China. The main sequence of poems is inspired by

Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo ( ; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish literature, Spanish-language and international literatur ...

's fictional encyclopedia, ''The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge''. The collection won the 2015 T. S. Eliot Prize—the first time this award has been given to a debut collection—as well as the 2015 ''Sunday Times'' / Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of The Year Award. It was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. ''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." Andrew Holgate, literary editor of ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of N ...

'', describes ''Loop of Jade'' as "a work of astonishing originality, depth and scope." As of 2015–16, Howe was 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 Umbrella Movement () was a political movement that emerged during the 2014 Hong Kong protests. Its name arose from the use of umbrellas as a tool for nonviolent resistance, passive resistance to the Hong Kong Police Force's use of pepper ...

. The work uses techniques that include the incorporation of found documents, such as the constitution of Hong Kong, reworked by erasing material. Her poetry has appeared in several anthologies, including three editions of ''The Best British Poetry'' (

Salt In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...

), ''Dear World & Everyone in It: New Poetry in the UK'' ( Bloodaxe; 2013) and ''Ten: The New Wave'' (Bloodaxe; 2014). Her

sonnet A sonnet is a fixed poetic form with a structure traditionally consisting of fourteen lines adhering to a set Rhyme scheme, rhyming scheme. The term derives from the Italian word ''sonetto'' (, from the Latin word ''sonus'', ). Originating in ...

"Relativity", commissioned for the 2015 National Poetry Day, was recorded by physicist

Stephen Hawking Stephen William Hawking (8January 194214March 2018) was an English theoretical physics, theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Between ...

, also a fellow of Gonville and Caius College. His book ''

A Brief History of Time ''A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes'' is a book on cosmology by the physicist Stephen Hawking, first published in 1988. Hawking writes in non-technical terms about the structure, origin, development and eventual fate of ...

'' had inspired Howe as a teenager. In June 2018 Howe was elected Fellow of the

Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820 by King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 800 Fellows, elect ...

in its "40 Under 40" initiative.

List of major works

*'' Loop of Jade'' (2015)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Howe, Sarah 1983 births Living people 21st-century British poets 21st-century British women writers Alumni of Christ's College, Cambridge British Asian writers British women poets English people of Chinese descent Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Hong Kong people of English descent Hong Kong women writers T. S. Eliot Prize winners