Foretokens
Book • 2025
Sarah Howe's 'Foretokens' is a collection of poems that returns to themes of belonging first explored in her debut, tracing her mother's clouded past and matrilineal history.
The book weaves personal memory, archival fragments, and cultural history to examine how a new generation transforms a fractured inheritance.
Howe interrogates hoarding, language, and political context, using gaps and silences to gesture toward erased or hidden lives.
Many poems meditate on the emotional costs of excavating family stories and the ethics of writing about others' pain.
The collection culminates in a long poem that attempts to hold disparate threads—material culture, DNA, physics, and motherhood—together into a coherent emotional narrative.
The book weaves personal memory, archival fragments, and cultural history to examine how a new generation transforms a fractured inheritance.
Howe interrogates hoarding, language, and political context, using gaps and silences to gesture toward erased or hidden lives.
Many poems meditate on the emotional costs of excavating family stories and the ethics of writing about others' pain.
The collection culminates in a long poem that attempts to hold disparate threads—material culture, DNA, physics, and motherhood—together into a coherent emotional narrative.
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Lucas Tse
Sarah Howe, "Foretokens" (Random House, 2025)
