Books
The Woman in the Chinese Collar
Forthcoming, Scribner, 2027
Propelled by a single portrait photograph, THE WOMAN IN THE CHINESE COLLAR is a lyrical, investigative family memoir that sees poet Hannah Lowe embark on a search across time and space to recover a lost story of a woman making her way in a man’s world. Combing through history and memory, Lowe traces the journey of her Afro–Chinese aunt Nelsa, a herbalist and healer, and renowned restaurant and nightclub hostess in Kingston, Jamaica.
Politics, poverty, disability, sex work and crime combine in this narrative of diaspora and home, as Lowe deftly and tenderly interrogates the role of writing and research in tracing routes and roots, and how to excavate the life of a marginalised woman when the archives are empty.
We were enthralled by Hannah Lowe’s inventive approach to conjuring Nelsa, her Afro-Chinese Jamaican aunt. Remarkably, Lowe evokes Nelsa through a single portrait photo and along the way excavates other marginalised women whose lives are rarely noted in official archives.’ – Judges of the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer’s Award
Old Friends
A faded memory of an east end Chinese restaurant galvanises Hannah Lowe’s exploration of Limehouse, the site of London’s first Chinatown – a place far larger in the public imagination than the few streets that once homed foreign seamen. The poems in this chapbook, by the winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2021, ask what can be found between census figures and sensationalist portrayals, between Brilliant Chang and Fu Manchu, and how do these flickers of the past speak to present perceptions of China, a place continually imagined and re-imagined in Britain’s public consciousness?
Rock, Bird, Butterfly
Hercules, 2022
A fire unpeels the walls of a stately home to reveal stunning hand-painted Chinese wallpaper, a ‘luxury good’ of empire. Here begins Hannah Lowe’s search to understand what this wallpaper, which still graces many of this country’s great houses, can tell us about Britain’s historical trade with China, the fashion for chinoiserie, and the little-known painting workshops in which the wallpaper was meticulously produced. The poems in Rock, Bird, Butterfly also recall the Chinese aesthetics of Lowe’s childhood home, considering how material cultures travel and what their journeys tell us of the past.
‘Lowe’s collection brings Chinese wallpaper’s little-known stories into our own time, a time in which its designs have been commodified, used for a whole range of products including the notebook covers she is drawn to ‘not because I’m part Chinese – I just like the look of things Chinese.’
– Clare Taylor
The Kids
Bloodaxe 2021
The Kids, winner of the Costa Book of the Year Award
& shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2021
Bloodaxe 2021
‘The poems in The Kids fizz and chat with all the vitality and longing of the classes they conjure. Funny, moving, sometimes painful and always questioning, they capture teachers and their students learning life from each other in profound and unexpected ways. A joy to read.’ – Liz Berry
‘These sequences of stories are a refreshing update to The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and To Sir with Love. Each of Lowe’s sonnets is a blackboard chalked with the tales of earnest teachers, of cheeky and lovable students, of being mentored to become a poet and of motherhood and learning to instruct again. Lowe makes the sonnet exciting for our age through its urgent, its compassionate, its wonderfully humorous address of the personal and the social.’ – Daljit Nagra
Chan
Bloodaxe 2016
‘Hannah Lowe is one of our very best young poets. Her new book Chan is every bit as good as her debut collection Chick… It is a book about memory and the construction of memories, unreliable memories, family memories, invented memories and make-believe, along with the brilliant If You Believe poems.’
– Andy Croft, Morning Star
‘While life at the border is not always easy, Lowe celebrates the importance of cultural diversity in her poems… by demonstrating that diversity is natural to the development of all societies, and indeed, a beautiful thing. As a woman with a diverse heritage herself, this message occupies a crucial role in the undercurrent of Lowe’s poetry, specifically in the face of the world’s current, culturally protectionist attitudes. Indeed, what is most compelling about Chan is that through the personal Lowe’s work reaches the universal by inviting us ‘to look both ways’.
– Amanda Merritt, The London Magazine
Long Time, No See
Periscope, 2015
Featured as Radio 4’s Book of the Week
Hannah Lowe s father Chick , a half-Chinese, half-black Jamaican immigrant, worked long hours at night to support his family except Chick was no ordinary working man. A legendary gambler, he would vanish into the shadows of East London to win at cards or dice, returning in daylight to greet the daughter whose love and respect he courted. In this poignant memoir, Lowe calls forth the unstable world of card sharps, confidence men and small-time criminals that eventually took its toll on Chick. She also evokes her father s Jamaica, where he learned his formidable skills, and her own coming of age in a changing Britain. Long Time No See speaks eloquently of love and its absence, regret and compassion, and the struggle to know oneself.
‘Eloquent, richly textured and brimming with feeling and unobtrusive sagacity, this is a compelling book—crafted with a lightness of touch by a talented wordsmith….which continues to resonate long after you have finished the last page. A highly recommended read.’
– Sonya Barker, The London Literary Journal.
Chick
Bloodaxe, 2013
Won the Michael Murphy Memorial Award for Best First Poetry Collection
‘A thrilling sequence of poems about the poet’s relationship to her Chinese-Jamaican gambling father which is funny, wise and affectionate.’ – Daljit Nagra, Big Issue (London), choosing Chick as one of his Top 5 Poetry Books
‘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.
Other Chapbooks: The Hitcher (Rialto 2012); R x (sine wave peak 2013); and Ormonde (Hercules Editions 2014) and The Neighbourhood (Outspoken Press, 2019), Rock, Bird, Butterfly (Hercules), Old Friends (Hercules).
