Hannah Lowe

Lowe was born in Ilford, Essex, in 1976. She studied American Literature at the University of Sussex, and has a master's degree in Refugee Studies, subsequently completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Newcastle University.[6] She taught English Literature at a London sixth form, and went on to teach Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University, Kingston University. She now lectures at Brunel University.[1]

Lowe began writing poetry at the age of 29 after her Jamaican-Chinese father died and her English mother had a stroke, later reflecting: "I had been suppressing a lot of grief over a sustained period of time and poetry... opened a door on that pain. I found that I could revisit the past in my poems, and contain it, or alter it even."

Following a suggestion by John Glenday at a course in 2010, Lowe began to write about her father — who had sailed from Jamaica to Britain on the SS Ormonde in 1947[7] — and this led to her debut poetry collection Chick, published by Bloodaxe Books in 2013.[3] This work was shortlisted for the Forward and Fenton Adelburgh First Collection Prizes. In September 2014, the Poetry Book Society included Lowe in its list of Next Generation Poets, published each decade.[4] In 2015, Chick won the Michael Murphy Memorial Award for Best First Collection.

Lowe's family memoir Long Time, No See was published by Periscope in July 2015 and was featured on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week.[1][8] Lowe cites Gerard Manley Hopkins, Anne Sexton, and Mark Doty as influences for her work.[3]

Lowe's most recent work is the chapbook The Neighbourhood, published by Out-Spoken in 2018, a social commentary on communities and gentrification which emerged from her role as poet-in-residence at Keats House, London. In 2020, she won a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors. Her collection, The Kids, was published by Bloodaxe in 2021.[9] It was shortlisted for the 2021 T. S. Eliot Prize.[10]

Lowe's 2021 book of poems, titled The Kids, was based on her ten years of experience teaching in schools in London. It won the Costa Book Award for poetry in 2021[11] and was later chosen as the overall Costa Book of the Year for 2021,[12] whith chair of judges Reeta Chakrabarti describing it as "a book to fall in love with – it's joyous, it's warm and it’s completely universal. It's crafted and skilful but also accessible".[13]

• The Hitcher (32 pages), 2011
• Chick, 2013, ISBN 978-1852249601
• Ormonde (chapbook), 2014, ISBN 978-0957273825
• Long Time, No See, 2015, ISBN 978-1859643969
• Chan, 2016, ISBN 978-1780372839
• The Neighbourhood, 2019, ISBN 978-1999679224
• The Kids, 2021, ISBN 978-1780375793

• Hannah Lowe website
• Melissa Richards, "Making her claim: Writer Hannah Lowe", Caribbean Beat, Issue 124 (November/December 2013).