Chan is a mercurial name, representing the travellers and shape-shifters of the poems in this collection. It is one of the many nicknames of Hannah Lowe's Chinese-Jamaican father, borrowed from the Polish emigre card magician Chan Canasta. It is also a name from China, where her grandfather's story begins. Alongside these figures, there's Joe Harriott, the Jamaican alto saxophonist, shaking up 1960s London; a cast of other long-lost family; and a ship full of dreamers sailing from Kingston to Liverpool in 1947 on the SS Ormonde. Hannah Lowe's second collection follows her widely acclaimed debut, Chick, which took readers on a journey round her father, a gambler who disappeared at night to play cards or dice in London's old East End to support his family. Published by Bloodaxe in 2013, Chick was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry, and selected for the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation Poets 2014 promotion.

'This is an outstanding, unputdownable first collection' - John Glenday.; 'An unforgettable book. In an age where blurby superlatives compete on debut book covers, this one has an edge: it is ABOUT someone, namely the poet's late father, from whose name it takes its title... "Say", which exploits understatement to the full, is remarkable, and heartbreaking' - Helena Nelson, Magma.; 'Hannah Lowe's debut collection is wonderful... a book which deals plainly and honestly with big emotions and tender, dramatic personal scenes' - Declan Ryan, Ambit.; 'Lowe's poetry is vibrant and sensitive, devoted to the retrieval of "lost, forgotten things"... skilful, bittersweet' - Chloe Stopa-Hunt, Poetry Review.

Hannah Lowe was born in Ilford to an English mother and Jamaican-Chinese father. She has lived in London, Brighton and Santa Cruz, California. She studied American Literature at the University of Sussex and has a Masters degree in Refugee Studies. She has worked as a teacher of literature and creative writing, recently completed her work on a PhD, and is now a lecturer in Creative Writing at Kingston University. Her pamphlet The Hitcher (The Rialto, 2011) was widely praised. Her first book-length collection Chick (Bloodaxe Books, 2013) won the 2015 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry, and was selected for the Poetry Book Society’s Next Generation Poets 2014 promotion. This was followed by two pamphlets, R x (sine wave peak, 2013) and Ormonde (Hercules Editions, 2014), and her family memoir Long Time No See (Periscope, 2015). She also read from Long Time, No See on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week in 2015. Her second full-length collection, Chan, was published by Bloodaxe in 2016. She is the current poet in residence at Keats House and a commissioned writer on the Colonial Countryside Project with the University of Leicester and Peepal Tree Press.