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 ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

, editor and researcher in English literature. Her first full poetry collection, '' Loop of Jade'', won the

T. S. Eliot Prize The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is a prize that was, for many years, awarded by the Poetry Book Society (UK) to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Priz ...

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 , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

, as well as a trustee of

The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry The Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin. Before 2022, the awards went to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language. ...

Biography

Howe was born in 1983 in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

. 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,

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, 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 Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Cambridge, MA Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston ...

, USA, 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 Gonville and Caius College, often referred to simply as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and one of th ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, 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 a part of Harvard University that fosters interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, a ...

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

National Poetry Competition The National Poetry Competition is an annual poetry prize established in 1978 in the United Kingdom. It is run by the UK-based Poetry Society and accepts entries from all over the world, with over 10,000 poems being submitted to the competition ...

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 Tall Lighthouse is an independent publishing house in the UK, established in 1999 by Les Robinson. It publishes full collections of poetry, pamphlets, and the anthology ''City Lighthouse'', a collection of poems by established and emerging poets a ...

in 2009. It won a 2010 Eric Gregory Trust Fund Award for poets under 30. 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 business ...

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, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known bo ...

's fictional encyclopedia, ''The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge''. The collection won the 2015

—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 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 News UK, whi ...

'', 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 Hong Kong democracy protests of 2014. Its name arose from the use of umbrellas as a tool for passive resistance to the Hong Kong Police's use of pepper spray to dispe ...

. 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 Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quantitie ...

), ''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 poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...

"Relativity", commissioned for the 2015

National Poetry Day National Poetry Day is a British campaign to promote poetry, including public performances. National Poetry Day was founded in 1994 by William Sieghart. It takes place annually in the UK on the first Thursday in October. Since its inception, it ha ...

, was recorded by physicist Stephen Hawking, 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 theoretical cosmology by English physicist Stephen Hawking. It was first published in 1988. Hawking wrote the book for readers who had no prior knowledge of physics. I ...

'' 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 George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, th ...

in its "40 Under 40" initiative.

List of major works

*'' Loop of Jade'' (poetry), Paperback - 2015

References

External links

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