Loop of Jade by Sarah Howe

Chatto & Windus

There is a Chinese proverb that says: ‘It is more profitable to raise geese than daughters.’ But geese, like daughters, know the obligation to return home. In her exquisite first collection, Sarah Howe explores a dual heritage, journeying back to Hong Kong in search of her roots.

With extraordinary range and power, the poems build into a meditation on hybridity, intermarriage and love – what meaning we find in the world, in art, and in each other. Crossing the bounds of time, race and language, this is an enthralling exploration of self and place, of migration and inheritance, and introduces an unmistakable new voice in British poetry.

Yan Ge says:

‘A beautiful, melancholic, and deeply intellectual collection of poems.

‘Howe’s elegant meditation on language, belonging, and the question of who owns what narrative is hugely inspiring not only to poets, but to any writer who works closely with the potentiality of language.’

Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Tanam Press/University of California Press

Dictee tells the story of several women: the Korean revolutionary Yu Guan Soon, Joan of Arc, Demeter and Persephone, Cha’s mother Hyung Soon Huo (a Korean born in Manchuria to first-generation Korean exiles), and Cha herself. The result is an enduringly powerful, beautiful, unparalleled work.

Structured around nine parts around the Greek Muses, this autobiography is the best-known work of the multidisciplinary Korean American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, widely considered her magnum opus.

Yan Ge says:

‘Written in Korean, English, and French, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee is a must-read for anyone who writes from the margins and a textbook on how language can be our sustenance as much as our weapon.

‘The genre-blending poetry collection embraces the reader even as it rejects them. And it is this rejection that proves most potent, rendering the moments of divulgence deeply empathic.’

Devotions by Lucy Caldwell

Faber & Faber

Eight short stories, including those following an Irish theatre troupe putting on an unusual production of Hamlet in New York, a time-travelling musician with a centuries-old violin, and a desperate man.

Transporting and profound, these are stories of love, grief, longing, of new beginnings, and the ways we find shelter in each other.

Yan Ge says:

‘Devotions, Caldwell’s fourth story collection, due out this coming April, further attests to her dexterity in and transcendence of the short story form.

‘For every lover and writer of short fiction who wonders how much a story can leave out and still say even more, this is a book to read and study.’

Sail Away Land by Ben Pester

Granta Books

A collection of short stories about normal things – losing the people we’re closest to, forgiving them, finding love and managing to hold onto it – but also about going to parties through a door in the back of a colleague’s head, housebreaking in search of a sister’s ghost, and asking the strangers in the kitchen to resurrect you at midnight.

Yan Ge says:

‘Still on the topic of short fiction, Sail Away Land, Ben Pester’s new collection coming out in June, cracks the genre open with his signature deadpan humour and audacious playfulness.

‘A collection about the mundanity of despair and the tedium of dystopia feels more relevant than ever for anyone living and writing through our time.’

Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner

Coffee House Press/Granta Books

This novel follows Adam Gordon, a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and his attitude towards art. Fuelled by strong coffee and self-prescribed tranquillizers, Adam’s ‘research’ soon becomes a meditation on the possibility of authenticity, as he finds himself increasingly troubled by the uncrossable distance between himself and the world around him. It’s not just his imperfect grasp of Spanish, but the underlying suspicion that his relationships, his reactions, and his entire personality are just as fraudulent as his poetry.

Yan Ge says:

‘In the spirit of Bens always appearing in pairs, I’m giving a plug to Ben Lerner’s first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, which has been blowing people’s minds since its publication in 2011.

‘It shows what happens when a poet decides to write fiction (horrifyingly, disturbingly good) and why every writer, whether working in prose or verse, should make sure to read a lot of poetry.’