{"id":48125,"date":"2016-07-08T01:55:27","date_gmt":"2016-07-08T01:55:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48125"},"modified":"2016-11-23T15:08:01","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T15:08:01","slug":"prize-winning-hong-kong-born-poet-sarah-howe-makes-verse-of-citys-basic-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48125","title":{"rendered":"Prize-winning Hong Kong-born poet Sarah Howe makes verse of city\u2019s Basic Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prize-winning Hong Kong-born poet Sarah Howe makes verse of city\u2019s Basic Law<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

South China Morning Post<\/a>
\n2016-07-07<\/p>\n

Clare Tyrrell-Morin<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Having played down her Chinese side while growing up and studying in the UK<\/a>, Howe, now at Harvard, has turned to it again as she makes an \u2018erasure poem\u2019 out of Hong Kong\u2019s<\/a> mini-constitution<\/em><\/p>\n

We meet in a small office on the second floor of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study<\/a>, overlooking a tranquil garden unseen from Harvard University\u2019s main thoroughfares. It\u2019s freezing outside, but the view is spectacular: the bare branches of an ancient tree, contemplated by scholars for generations, silhouetted against a wintry sky. It\u2019s a good view for a poet.<\/p>\n

The office belongs to a Radcliffe Fellow, Sarah Howe<\/a>, who is spending the year here with 50 other artists and scholars. You may not know her name yet, but Howe could become one of Hong Kong\u2019s<\/a> most celebrated writers.<\/p>\n

In December, the 32-year-old won the Sunday Times\/Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award for authors under the age of 35. The previous month, scientist Stephen Hawking<\/a> read out a poem, titled \u201cRelativity\u201d, that she had written for him for Britain\u2019s National Poetry Day<\/a>. And, in January, Howe was presented with the \u00a320,000 (HK$204,000) T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry<\/a> at a lavish ceremony at the Victoria and Albert Museum<\/a>, in London<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Her winning collection was “Loop of Jade<\/a>\u201d, which weaves around her identity as a British-Chinese poet born in Hong Kong. The dualistic, hybrid work dances between the search for her mother\u2019s Chinese roots and subjects as varied as censorship, 14th-century Flemish paintings, evenings in Arizona<\/a> and the rain in London. The book captures a quest for identity, dislocation and the crossing of waters \u2013 themes familiar to many a Hongkonger<\/a> \u2013 yet, equally, it is an exploration of the Western literary canon and the impact Chinese poetry has had on it…<\/p>\n