The Festive Backroom: Dr Hannah Lowe

How great to find a poet who writes about Muzzy, a major character in that great series of language instruction CDs. I remember them barking constantly in the background as my daughters played, in the hope that they might learn Spanish by osmosis. One of them has gone on to be a linguist at university, mind you, though in a completely different language. Hannah's poem here is not about Muzzy, though, but about definitions of loneliness, or peoples' ideas of loneliness. It's fantastic to feature Hannah here in the Festive Backroom, she is a thoughtful, edgy and very contemporary poet.

Dr Hannah Lowe is a Lecturer in Creative Writing whose work draws on first hand account, memoir and history, particularly post-colonial history. Her PHD used historical research "to narrate the 1947 journey of the SS Ormonde, the immigrant ship predating Windrush." Her current research is on Chinese arrival and settlement to the UK.

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. Her second full-length collection, 'Chan', was published by Bloodaxe in 2016, and a third, 'The Kids', is due from Bloodaxe in 2021. She is former poet-in-residence at Keats House, London.

Here she reads Nĭ hăo:

 

Nĭ hăo


In bed this morning, reading Adrienne Rich,
Rory beside me watching a lime green monster
called Muzzy on his Ipad. Muzzy is teaching
my son Chinese. Nĭ hăo, the boy says, over
and over. Outside the birds have been saying hello
for hours, and the early sky has finally bloomed
to blue. Someone somewhere playing a piano.
Every man I bring into this bedroom

says Books! regarding the shelves, the jamboree
of books in every colour, stacked two rows thick,
who knows how many words, not all of them read.
But this April morning, it’s Diving into the Wreck
and I think, is this what aloneness is? A warm bed,
my books, this small boy flowering beside me?

Hannah's Website:

https://hannahlowe.me/

More Poems here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/hannah-lowe

Her author page foor Bloodaxe:

https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/category/hannah-lowe