The Kids

Hannah Lowe was born in Ilford to an English mother and Jamaican-Chinese father. She has lived in London, Brighton and Santa Cruz, California. She studied American Literature at the University of Sussex and has a Masters degree in Refugee Studies, and a PhD in Creative Writing from Newcastle University. She has worked as a teacher of literature, and is now a lecturer in Creative Writing at Brunel University. She has been poet in residence at Keats House, and in 2020 she received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors. 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, followed by a pamphlet, The Neighbourhood (Out-Spoken Press) in 2019. Her third full collection, The Kids (Bloodaxe Books, 2021), was the Poetry Book Society Choice for Autumn 2021. It won the 2021 Costa Poetry Award and went on to be named Costa Book of the Year, and was also shortlisted for the 2021 T.S. Eliot Prize.

8 The White Dog

I
11 The Register
12 Try, Try, Try Again
13 Queen Bee
14 The Art of Teaching I
15 The Art of Teaching II
16 The Art of Teaching III
17 Technology
18 Sonnet for Vlad
19 The Only English Kid
20 Notes on a Scandal
21 Boy
22 Simile
23 The Sixth-form Theatre Trip
24 Sonnet for the A Level English Literature and Language Poetry Syllabus
25 Red-handed
26 Sonnet for the Punched Pocket
27 Pepys
28 Janine I
29 Janine II
30 The Unretained
31 All Over It
32 Sonnet for Rosie
33 Something Sweet
34 7/7
35 Ricochet
36 British-born

II
38 Mr Presley
39 Mrs Vanuka
40 Blocks
41 She
42 Bethena
43 Étudier
44 Martin and Pam
45 The Only Black Girl
46 Rain Dance
47 The Pitch
48 John I: Pink Humming Bird
49 John II: For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf
50 Love
51 So Amazing
52 The Stroke
55 Sonnet for Noah
56 Welling
57 Dear Professor
58 White Roses
59 Daughter
60 House
61 The River
62 Players

III
64 The Sky Is Snowing
65 Skirting
66 Scooting
67 Fire Scissors Drowning
68 The Size of Him
69 Sonnet for Boredom
70 Balloons
71 In H&M
72 Sonnet for Darren
73 Zoom
74 Aretha in the Bath
75 His Books
76 Anjali Mudra
77 Sonnet for Rory with Soap Bubbles
78 Nĭ hăo
79 Kathy, Carla