Hannah Lowe is one of a generation of contemporary poets whose work celebrates the multicultural life of London and its environs in the eighties and nineties. She writes with a strong sense of place, voice, and emotional subtlety. Her writing is distinguished by its vivid portrayal of specific locales and its nuanced exploration of human experience.
Hannah Lowe taught for a decade in an inner-city London sixth form. At the heart of this book of compassionate and energetic sonnets are 'The Kids', her students, the teenagers she nurtured. But the poems go further, meeting her own child self as she comes of age in the riotous 80s and 90s, later bearing witness to her small son's experience.
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.
What is a neighbour? What makes a community? In this themed collection, Hannah Lowe focuses on the urban places she knows and loves, and finds a rich complexity of neighbourliness under the extreme pressure. These poems look urgently into the future, into communities bearing the weight of austerity and gentrification, where global struggles manifest in the local. Nowhere is more at stake than the circle of home the author draws around her infant son, who must learn the fragile meanings of the neighbourhood.
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.
Lowe's second collection follows her widely acclaimed debut, Chick, about her father, a Chinese-Jamaican gambler. Another of his nicknames, Chan also represents the travellers and shapeshifters in these poems.