Reviews

• Compra equivocada

  na verdade eu percebi que o livro era e-book quando realizei a compra. infelizmente não tenho o dispositivo pra ler, então não foi uma compra satisfatória. será possível trocar o produto? atenciosamente, Ana

• Well deserving of the Eliot Prize

  One of the most prestigious (and financially rewarding) prizes in poetry is the Poetry Book Society’s T.S. Eliot Prize. Founded in 1953 by T.S. Eliot and several friends to “propagate the art of poetry,” the Poetry Book Society is based in the United Kingdom and draws interest from all over the English-speaking world. The prize, created in 1993, provides 20,000 pounds (about $30,000) to the winner and 1,500 pounds (about $2,250) to each of the other nine shortlisted nominees. The 2015 shortlist was impressive, including such stellar poets as Mark Doty, Sean O’Brien and Claudia Rankine. All 10 nominees participated in a program of readings in London before the winner was announced. This year’s winner was Sarah Howe for her first collection of poetry, "Loop of Jade." It’s a beautiful collection of 37 poems, filled with precision, imagery, and flat-out beauty. In many of the poems, Howe explores her dual cultural ancestry—she was born in 1983 in Hong Kong, the daughter of an English father and a Chinese mother. The family moved to the UK when she was a child. Using both prose poems and free-verse, Howe explores her inheritance. The title poem, for example, is her mother talking about growing up in deprivation in a Chinese tenement. She writes: “I can never know this place. Its scoop of rice in a chink-rimmed bowl, its daily thinning soup.” She explains this loss as a fact as opposed to a lament, which has the curious result of emphasizing her separation from her heritage. That “separateness” is especially poignant in “Earthward,” one of the shorter poems in the collection. Earthward I watched the shadowplay of trees against the blinds one October – in the way sometimes you stare at a pale face across the bed so long you hardly see it – fingers trembling, vague as a street at night, as nature stripped of accident, they shook with a gusting stutter more restless still for being not the thing itself. Howe’s poems have appeared in Poetry Review, Poetry, PN, The Guardian (UK newspapers still tend to publish poetry), Poetry London and several anthologies. She received the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2015, and is currently a fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute. She is also the founding editor of Prac Crit, an online journal of poetry and criticism. Yes, Howe was up against some serious competitors for the Eliot Prize. Yes, she’s young. And yes, it’s her first collection. But the prize is awarded for a collection, not a body of work, and Loop of Jade is well deserving.

• Very evocative poertry

  I was so moved by this poet's work that after reading a few poems I had to write another poem of my own. My only problem is that I seem ro have lost my copy so will have yo get another from Amazon but well worth the cost to be able to return and indulge in some beautiful verses. Chris Naylor

• Ok

  Interesting read. Some nice phrases and images..good book to go back to and truly digest. Needed time and rereading to appreciate some poems

• This collection is charming, elegant, and stylish. ...

  This collection is charming, elegant, and stylish. Sarah's Howe's has real weight and depth in her writing. I look forward to reading more of her work.

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