Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Chick
    Unavailable
    Chick
    Unavailable
    Chick
    Ebook92 pages37 minutes

    Chick

    By Hannah Lowe

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Hannah Lowe's first book of poems takes you on a journey round her father, a Chinese-black Jamaican migrant who disappeared at night to play cards or dice in London's old East End to support his family, an unstable and dangerous existence that took its toll on his physical and mental health. 'Chick' was his gambling nickname. A shadowy figure in her childhood, Chick was only half known to her until she entered the night world of the old man as a young woman. The name is the key to poems concerned with Chick's death, the secret history of his life in London, and her perceptions of him as a father. With London as their backdrop, Hannah Lowe's deeply personal narrative poems are often filmic in effect and brimming with sensory detail in their evocations of childhood and coming-of-age, love and loss of love, grief and regret. '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. Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloodaxe Books
    Release dateMar 27, 2014
    ISBN9781780370835
    Unavailable
    Chick
    Author

    Hannah Lowe

    Hannah Lowe was born in Ilford to an English mother and Jamaican-Chinese father. She has worked as a teacher of literature and creative writing, recently completed her work on a PhD, and is now a lecturer in Creative Writing at Kingston University. Her pamphlet The Hitcher (The Rialto, 2011) was widely praised. Her first book-length collection Chick (Bloodaxe Books, 2013) won the 2015 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry, and was selected for the Poetry Book Society’s Next Generation Poets 2014 promotion. This was followed by two pamphlets, R x (sine wave peak, 2013) and Ormonde (Hercules Editions, 2014), and her family memoir Long Time No See (Periscope, 2015). She also read from Long Time, No See on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week in 2015. Her second full-length collection, Chan, was published by Bloodaxe in 2016. She is the current poet in residence at Keats House and a commissioned writer on the Colonial Countryside Project with the University of Leicester and Peepal Tree Press.

    Read more from Hannah Lowe

    Related to Chick

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      I’ve seen enough films where a character nickshimself shaving or maybe has a bread knife slip and the thinrun of blood is supposed to stand for some violence,for something he did and is desperateto cover up, but the truth will out—I’ve seen enough th

      2 min read

    • Article

      Oceans

      Mar 15, 2019

      I used to be interested in mountains. They moved at a speed I could deal with. They waited for me to catch up. It was like that all my life. Then we moved to California, and after eight years of earthquakes I began to doubt my ability to put things i

      12 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      Two Poems
      2 min read

    • Article

      Bhanu Kapil

      Mar 15, 2019

      Everything is red. The trees look like they’re bending over. The lorry is approaching the village. Nurpur. Don’t tell anyone it was Nurpur. Just say it was any old village. A motorbike was coming from the opposite direction. The driver of the motorbi

      5 min read

    • Article

      Where To Start With Louise Glück, Winner Of The 2020 Nobel Prize In Literature

      Oct 14, 2020

      The Swedish Academy has awarded this year's Nobel Prize in literature to Louise Gluck, a former U.S. poet laureate. The 16th woman to win the prestigious prize and the first American woman since Toni Morrison in 1993, Gluck is the author of 12 poetry

      3 min read

    • Article

      Re-Covered: The Mischief

      Dec 2, 2019

      Re-Covered: The Mischief
      8 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2018

      Moon river, swollen river, river of starholeand bright, harness river, lichen river,river we velvet with our filth.River of butter and river of witches, rivercracked open careful like egg, or burstapart, unleashing its violet load.River mouths, river

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Kevin Barry

      Dec 18, 2020

      Rattling around the house in the County Sligo hills, swinging from bouts of paranoia to moments of strange, demented hilarity, a 900-page doorstopper was just what I needed to stay grounded. The post A Year in Reading: Kevin Barry appeared first on T

      2 min read

    • Article

      Bob Ross Paints Your Portrait

      Jun 14, 2022

      Today we’re going to get to work on the detailsof your expression. And believe it or not,the only colors we’re going to use will be blacker than most blacks. We’ll use a black canvasand just a single finger instead of a brush.So let’s take and dab th

      3 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: November 2020

      Nov 5, 2020

      Stop obsessively refreshing the New York Times's elections page, and check out these new books of poetry by Alice Quinn, Margaret Atwood, Yi Lei, Karina Borowicz, Valzhyna Mort, and Paul Celan. The post Must-Read Poetry: November 2020 appeared first

      6 min read

    • Article

      Sex And Rage

      May 30, 2021

      Sex And Rage
      6 min read

    • Article

      Diaspora Sonnets

      Sep 1, 2022

      The old men drink their spritzers and gossipunder awnings. Red hued and blustery, like two roosters on the side of a road.Skyward they crane their necks and laugh, sometimes they wonder about kings and future kingsand how the muscles peer from their

      2 min read

    • Article

      Devil Asks Why You Would Mouth The Word Pity

      Jul 1, 2022

      even in this abundance of dark? Even in this abundance of dark you have totake the stars on faith. Look: Under today’s dim sky there is a basket.In that basket there is a fish. Come night, you are the animal that will eat the best parts of it. And ye

      1 min read

    • Article

      A River Runs Through It

      Apr 14, 2020

      A River Runs Through It
      1 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      He kept me through childhood.There was a reasonhe kept me from sin like a biscuitwarming in the oven.It’s okay I tell the rain to keep him a theorybut bring him downonce in a while.It’s okay to be honest or selfishbut find the spot where you sinka li

      2 min read

    • Article

      Toward A Unified Theory

      Jan 1, 2022

      Condemned to live inside the weatherof our moods What are you doing? Filling this bucket with waterand dumping it into the water They can’t excavate the amphitheater further because it extends backbeneath the houses We close their eyes not for thembu

      2 min read

    • Article

      José Donoso Saw the Future of Latin American Literature

      Nov 21, 2023

      American readers have largely forgotten the single greatest writer to come from the Latin American Boom: Chilean novelist José Donoso. The post José Donoso Saw the Future of Latin American Literature appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Lording

      Jun 14, 2022

      It’s 4:38 P.M., eight minutes after I usually go home, but now I’m rooting around under my chair cushion, double-checking my shirt pocket, hunting for an unmarked baggie of white bars, which I shouldn’t have left in my office, which I shouldn’t have

      17 min read

    Reviews for Chick

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words