National Poetry Month Readalong Loop of Jade - First Week

It has been such a great pleasure this week allowing myself the time to read the first seven poems in the book and I hope that other people have also been able to make a start on Loop of Jade. I should put in a disclaimer at this point and explain that I am a poetry enthusiast and practising poet not a professor of English so I’m going to give you my personal reactions to the poems rather than textual analysis. At the end of the Readalong we’ll look at what other reviewers have said about the book but for now let’s concentrate on the first group of poems.

Mother’s Jewellery Box feels like a perfect poem with which to open this collection. It hints at the treasures to come, the silver chains, carnelians, her amber ring. I particularly liked the stanza in which the poet begins to examine the relationship with the mother by gauging the weight of the amber ring.

Crossing from Guangdong is so much more than the travelogue poem that it might seem at first, although it has specific details which bring the place alive. 

It is about a search for your roots

"Something sets us looking for a place"

but having trouble finding it. The word strange occurs twice in the first two pages of this poem. And yet the writer is recognised by the waitress in Beijing and the old woman on the bus, who could have been her grandmother.

The next two poems Start with Weather and (a) Belonging to emperor are in couplets and the latter is the first in a series of poems inspired by the animals alleged to be in a Chinese encyclodepia.

(b) Embalmed made me think of the terracotta warriors except that the animals in this poem seemed to have been entombed as living creatures. It includes a history lesson about the fate of the first emperor. 

After Earthward comes (c) Tame which could be based on a folk story but has more recent resonances about how unfortunate it is to have  a daughter or indeed to be born female. 

"He called her Mei Ming: No Name. She never learned to speak. Her life

        maimed by her father’s sorrow."

Our final poem for this week is the title poem in the book, Loop of Jade, which returns to the mother's story, told after dark 

when the men are asleep, I think she believes it's someone else's turn to listen.

National Poetry Month 2016 Giveaway of Loop of Jade Readalong

When I set up this April's Readalong of Loop of Jade I did promise to offer Sarah Howe's book as a giveaway.

To be in with chance of wnning the copy all you have to do is to follow the blog during April and to post a comment on each of the Readalong posts. I will put the names into a box at the end of the month and select a winner.

As I commented to someone yesterday I am on a mission to get more people to read and engage with poetry and to get over the worry that you have to be clever or have an English degree to do so. Neither applies in my case.

Please do share this post.

Sarah Howe's Loop of Jade readalong for National Poetry Month - Week 1

Week 1 1st April to 8th April 

We will be reading the first seven poems in Loop of Jade for the first week. Some people have only just ordered their copies so we have a gentle start for the readalong. In later weeks we'll be considering ten poems per week.

Loop of Jade opens with Mother's Jewellery Box, which you can find on the Penguin website and hear Sarah reading. I had a spooky moment re-reading the poem this morning as on my bedside table is my mother's jewellery box which came from Hong Kong and is similar to the one described in the poem.

National Poetry Month Readalong - Sarah Howe's Loop of Jade

In celebration of April being National Poetry Month I am going to be reading Sarah Howe's Loop of Jade which won the T.S.Eliot prize in January 2016. 

It works out at about a poem a day and once a week I'll post an update on my progress. You'd be most welcome to read along with me, even if you don't normally read poetry. It will be worth it I promise.

From the blurb on the back of the book.

'Sarah Howe's soulful poems are as vivid as a river flowing through the Chinese landscape, as alive as mothers calling to their children', Xinran

Pascale Petit, Chair of the T.S.Eliot panel said
"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."

I love this book so much that I keep giving my latest copy to people I'd like to share it with, so if you read along with me this month you may be in with a chance of winning a copy.