Johnian Poet Sarah Howe wins TS Eliot prize for debut collection

Johnian and former Harper-Wood Student, Sarah Howe, has won the 2015 TS Eliot prize for poetry with Loop of Jade - the first time a debut collection has won the prestigious award.

After being shortlisted along with nine of the biggest names in poetry, including Don Paterson, Claudia Rankine, Sean O’Brien and Les Murray, Sarah was presented with the award during a ceremony at the V&A Museum in London.

Previous winners of the £20,000 prize include Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney and former poet laureates Ted Hughes and Carol Ann Duffy.

Sarah held the Harper-Wood Studentship at St John’s in 2012. The one-year Studentship provides a graduate of any British university with the chance to pursue a creative writing project in a country of their choice outside the UK, where they carry out their own research and produce a piece of fiction, poetry, or drama.

Born in Hong Kong to a Chinese mother and an English father before moving to England as a child, Sarah used the Studentship to return to Hong Kong in search of her roots. Loop of Jade, published by Chatto and Windus, charts this journey and explores Sarah’s dual heritage.

Speaking after the collection was published in May 2015, Sarah said “The Harper-Wood Studentship changed the course of my writing, thanks to its sustained opportunity to observe and inhabit another culture from the inside”.

 “The year I spent journeying back to China was crucial to me as I completed Loop of Jade, a book preoccupied with what it means to travel ‘home’ to a place I haven’t lived for most of my life.” Sarah added.

Member of the judges’ panel, Pascale Petit, is quoted on The Bookseller website as saying: “In a year with an incredibly ambitious and diverse shortlist, it was difficult to choose the winner. However Sarah Howe’s Loop of Jade shone with its startling exploration of gender and injustice through place and identity, its erudition, and powerful imagery as well as her daring experiment with form.  She brings new possibilities to British poetry.”

The TS Eliot prize is run by the Poetry Book Society and was maintained and presented by Eliot’s widow Valerie until her death in 2012.  The award is now funded by Eliot’s estate.

A copy of Loop of Jade is held in the general interest section of the Library at St John’s.

Sarah, who also won the 2015 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, is currently undertaking a writing Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard.  For more information about Sarah Howe, visit her website http://www.sarahhowepoetry.com

To find out more about the opportunities provided by the Harper-Wood Studentship, visit: http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/harper-wood-studentship