Photo: S Chadawong
ROMALYN ANTE
Agent: Isobel Dixon
Assistant: Finlay Charlesworth
Biography: Romalyn Ante FRSL is a British-Filipino poet, essayist, and editor. She grew up in the Philippines and migrated to her second home, Wolverhampton, in 2005.
She is co-founding editor of harana poetry, a magazine for poets who write in English as a second or parallel language, and the founder of Tsaá with Roma, an online interview series with poets and other creatives. She was awarded the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship and she currently sits as an editorial board member for Poetry London magazine.
She is the first East-Asian to win the Poetry London Prize (2018) and the Manchester Poetry Prize (2017). She also won the Creative Future Literary Award 2017.
Apart from being a writer, she also works as a specialist nurse practitioner. Her debut poetry collection, ANTIEMETIC FOR HOMESICKNESS, is published by Chatto & Windus and was an Irish Times Best Poetry Book of 2020, an Observer Poetry Book of the Month and a Poetry School Poetry Book of the Year 2020. It was also a National Poetry Day UK Recommended Read and is longlisted for the Jhalak Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize.
Praise for Romalyn Ante:
‘Poignant, beautiful, and meditative writing on movement — living in a foreign country, being away from one’s family, speaking a language not quite your own... This is possibly the most beautiful thing I have read this year.’ – Maria Lewandowska, The Poetry School Poetry Books of the Year
‘By turns playful and tender, offering a formally-various exploration of migration, community, and nursing... there is honesty, musicality, a powerful heart.’ – Seán Hewitt, Irish Times Best Poetry Books of 2020
‘Captivating, moving, witty, and agile... [Ante] is an unforced poet with a lightness of touch and fortitude, not neglecting to see her situation within a wider cultural and historical context... Each poem is a go-between: it is through poetry that worlds meet and converse. .. Ante proves an accomplished bridge builder.' Kate Kellaway, Observer Poetry Book of the Month
‘Ante’s poems are like embers, pared back to a slow-burning emotional core whose intensity she sustains elegantly throughout the collection.’ – Stephanie Sy-Quia, Times Literary Supplement
‘A poetry of rapturous images and riveting conscience.’ – Tracy K. Smith
‘A poet to fall in love with... a fascinating and moving story of migration and loss, caring and tenderness.’ – Liz Berry
‘It is something of miracle to experience a debut that charts our 'dislocated world' with such incisive generosity.’ – R.A. Villanueva
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