{"product_id":"foretokens","title":"Foretokens","description":"Unearthed in a clear-out, a picture calendar she’s kept \u003cbr\u003e– hoarding, I’ve learnt, is a mark of the emigrant – \u003cbr\u003eacross continents and time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo begins Sarah Howe’s extraordinary new collection, returning to the riddle of belonging she explored in her award-winning debut, Loop of Jade. At the heart is her own mother’s clouded past: abandoned as a baby and taken in, at the turbulent dawn of Communist China, by a woman with her own hidden motives. Now a mother herself, Howe finds herself re-examining this unreliable narrative with fresh sight. Sifting through her own history, the poet asks, how can a new generation transform a shattered inheritance? And what is lost and gained in the pursuit?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat unfolds is a personal Babel of voices and identities, and an examination of the contradictory legacies of colonialism, where poems – past and present – act as ‘foretokens’, omens of what lies ahead. A central spine of poems takes the molecular structure of DNA as its template: a ‘ladder of atoms beginning to twist’, down which the poet steps into the darkness of time. Objects of witness resurface to tell their own stories: fragile porcelains of past centuries transiting across continents; a picture calendar of old postcards from another world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘From the other side of ruin \/ we found safe passage’, Howe writes in these spectacular poems of emotional heft and quickening wit, their voice salvaged from the fragments of a former self. Foretokens is a monumental work of survival and creation, turning over what is left behind as it strikes out towards astonishing new vistas.","brand":"Vintage Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51520142279003,"sku":"9781784746131","price":21.95,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/suomalainen-test.myshopify.com\/products\/foretokens","provider":"Suomalainen Test","version":"1.0","type":"link"}