Hannah Lowe's CHICK has been shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First
Collection Prize - one of the most influential and established prizes in
the UK for a first book of poems. Hannah features on the shortlist
alongside four other poets, including Emily Berry and Dan O'Brien. Now
in its second year of funding by The Fenton Arts Trust, the winner of
the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize will be announced at the
start of the 25th Aldeburgh International Poetry Festival on Friday 8
November 2013.
Hannah was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize
for Best First Collection. The winner of the £5000 prize will be
announced in a ceremony at the South Bank Centre on 1 October. CHICK is
published by Bloodaxe Books.
Hannah is also performing at a
benefit for James Berry on 27 September, at 7pm at The Tabernacle,
London. Tickets cost £45 including entertainment and food buffet and
money raised goes to the James Berry Trust and the Alzheimer's Society.
James was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease nine years ago and has been
in residential care for over two years.
Hannah Lowe's memoir LONG TIME NO SEE was recently acquired by Telegram, and will be published July 2014.
Praise for CHICK:
'CHICK
opens with a powerful sequence of poems centred around the poet's
memories of her Chinese/black Jamaican father - a complex, larger than
life character who came to London in the late 40s and eked out a living
as, among other things, a gambler. But the book is very much more than a
personal reminiscence and family history. This is a collection
cross-hatched with myth and history, a hymn to London as much as to its
characters. Though all the poems have a strong, vividly cinematographic
line, they are also beautifully lyrical - sung stories, offering us the
glimpsed lives of strangers and lovers. But however poignant and moving
it may be, the collection remains doggedly celebratory of life itself,
of people and place, loved and remembered. Each poem takes us a little
further into the mystery of lives in a world that is as incomprehensible
as it is unforgettable. This is an outstanding, unputdownable first
collection' - John Glenday.
'Here is a poet with a commanding
style; her voice is entirely her own, both rich and laconic. These are
poems springing from the page with vitality, rue and insight. Her
elegies are restrained and devastating. An extraordinary debut' -
Penelope Shuttle.
'CHICK is an unforgettable book. In an age
where blurby superlatives compete on debut book covers, this one has an
edge: it is about someone, namely the poet's late father, from whose
name it takes its title.
The reader approaches the book not only as a
set of poems but as a narrative with a fascinating central character.
The early poems about him are riveting.
[The poem] 'Say', which
exploits understatement to the full, is remarkable, and heartbreaking.
And did I like the poet? Yes, enormously. You couldn't not. She is
there as a child, and a young, vulnerable adult, and then as a grown
woman lamenting her own unfatherly father with compassion, but without
sentiment.' - Helena Nelson, Magma
'A notable achievement,
particularly in a first book
a sustained elegiac sequence, raw, but
consistently well-wrought.
Lowe's poetry is vibrant and sensual.' -
Chloe Stopa-Hunt, Poetry Review
