Marabou

Yeh Jane

"Marabou", Jane Yeh's first book of poems, is a meditation on the nature of artifice, and on the self. Her snapshots freeze fraught instants in the lives of a broad cast of characters: the horror movie mummy, an Elizabethan shoemaker, a flock of Cumbrian sheep; there's Harry Potter's owl and Oscar Wilde, two European princesses... In these beautifully crafted poems, her personae address the themes of love, lust, glamour and desperation with wit and flair. Hers is the language of fashion, espionage, revenge tragedy; her taut pressure-packed lines combine vivid detail and bold confession and reach unexpected emotional truths.

About the Author

Jane Yeh was born in America and educated at Harvard University. She holds master's degrees from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and Manchester Metropolitan University. Her first full-length collection, "Marabou", was published by Carcanet in 2005 and shortlisted for the Whitbread, Forward, and Aldeburgh Festival poetry prizes. Her chapbook, "Teen Spies", was published in 2003 by Metre Editions. Her acclaimed second collection, "The Ninjas", was published by Carcanet in 2012.

Currently Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Kingston University, she also teaches residential courses for the Arvon Foundation and writes on books, theatre, fashion, and sport for publications including "The Times Literary Supplement", "Poetry Review", "Time Out", and "The Village Voice". She has been the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and a residency at Yaddo. She lives in London.

Reviews

"Marabou is fresh and surprising. If only all first books were this unusual" – Stephen Knight, the Independent on Sunday

Back to the list of books