Sarah Howe

I try to imagine you as a girl-

a street of four-storey plaster buildings,

carved wooden doors, weathered, almost shrines

(like in those postcards of old Hong Kong you loved)-

you, a child in bed, the neighbours always in

and out, a terrier dog, half-finished bowls

of rice, the ivory Mah Jong tablets

clacking, like joints, swift and mechanical,

shrill cries -ay-yah! fah!- late into the night.

My heart is bounded by a scallop shell-

This strange pilgrimage to home.

 

From Crossing from Guangdong by Sarah Howe

 

Sarah Howe is a British poet and academic. She was born in Hong Kong. This excerpt is from her first full-length poetry collection Loop of Jade, winner of the T. S. Eliot prize and the Sunday Times/ Peter Fraser and Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award.

Read more here:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/11/poet-sarah-howe-named-young-writer-of-the-year