Foretokens

Howe, Sarah

ISBN 10: 1784746134 / ISBN 13: 9781784746131

Published by Chatto & Windus, 2025

Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. An apparently unread copy in perfect condition. Dust cover is intact with no nicks or tears. Spine has no signs of creasing. Pages are clean and not marred by notes or folds of any kind. Seller Inventory # rev5620823402

Synopsis:

'Howe is peerless and I look at her work, happily, with awe' OCEAN VUONG

A landmark new collection from T. S. Eliot Prize-winner Sarah Howe, navigating the complex inheritance of family, language and colonialism – and forming a portrait of a mother in search of her past and herself.

'Unearthed in a clear-out, a picture calendar she’s kept
– hoarding, I’ve learnt, is a mark of the emigrant –
across continents and time.'

So begins Sarah Howe’s extraordinary new collection, returning to the riddle of belonging she explored in her award-winning debut, Loop of Jade. At the heart is her own mother’s clouded past: abandoned as a baby and taken in, at the turbulent dawn of Communist China, by a woman with her own hidden motives.

Now a mother herself, Howe finds herself re-examining this unreliable narrative with fresh sight. Sifting through her own history, the poet asks, how can a new generation transform a shattered inheritance? And what is lost and gained in the pursuit?

Foretokens is a monumental work of survival and creation, turning over what is left behind as it strikes out towards astonishing new vistas.

'Foretokens arrives . . . as a kind of literary event . . . It’s a work of supreme concision. Not a word is out of place' Lucy Thynne, Telegraph

About the Author: Sarah Howe is a British poet, academic and editor. Born in Hong Kong to an English father and Chinese mother, she moved to England as a child. Her pamphlet, A Certain Chinese Encyclopedia, won an Eric Gregory Award, and her first collection, Loop of Jade (Chatto & Windus, 2015), won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. In 2014, she co-founded Prac Crit, an online journal of poetry and criticism. She is currently the Poetry Editor at Chatto & Windus and an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Liverpool.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Foretokens
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
Publication Date: 2025
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Like New