Photo credit: S Chadawong
AGIMAT
Poetry, 96 pages, Chatto & Windus, September 2024
'this charms the buried light of stars –
this deflects bullets – this unblooms a war – '
In some Filipino clans, parents pass down to each child an AGIMAT, an amulet, in the hope its magic will protect and empower them. At the dawn of the pandemic, the poet – a practising nurse in the NHS – is thrown onto the frontlines of the war against COVID-19.
Past conflicts swim into the now. When she falls in love with a man of Japanese heritage, it forces a reckoning with her family’s suffering under Japan’s brutal wartime occupation of the Philippines. Elsewhere, we meet the irrepressible goddess Mebuyan, who, in Philippine myth, nurses the spirits of children in the underworld. Here, she watches over young people in crisis – a girl who can’t stop cutting herself, a teenager who has leapt from a railway viaduct.
These are poems of strength and solace; they question what it means to fight, and what it takes to heal.
ROMALYN ANTE
Agent: Isobel Dixon
Assistant: Finlay Charlesworth
Biography: Romalyn Ante is a Filipino-British writer born and bred in Lipa, Philippines. She was 16 years old when her mother – a nurse in the National Health Service – brought the family to the United Kingdom. She now lives in the West Midlands where, as well as writing and editing, she works as a registered NHS nurse and psychotherapist, specialising in the mental healthcare of young people.
ANTIEMETIC FOR HOMESICKNESS
Poetry, 96 pages, Chatto & Windus, July 2020
The poems in Romalyn Ante's luminous debut build a bridge between two worlds: journeying from the country 'na nagluwal sa 'yo' - that gave birth to you - to a new life in the United Kingdom.
Steeped in the richness of Filipino folklore, and studded with Tagalog, these poems speak of the ache of assimilation and the complexities of belonging, telling the stories of generations of migrants who find exile through employment - through the voices of the mothers who leave and the children who are left behind.
With dazzling formal dexterity and emotional resonance, this expansive debut offers a unique perspective on family, colonialism, homeland and heritage: from the countries we carry with us, to the places we call home.
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 was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Chatto published her second collection AGIMAT in 2023, and will publish Romalyn’s first novel, THE LEFT-BEHIND CHILD, in 2026.
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 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the first East-Asian writer to win the Poetry London Prize (2018) and the Manchester Poetry Prize (2017). She also won the Creative Future Literary Award 2017.
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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