Annie Fan

‘I hope, and I think any poet hopes, really, that this pamphlet is playful — with gender, language and inheritance, with things shared and things solitary.’

Annie Fan reads law at Oxford University where she was President of the Poetry Society. Her work has been broadcast by BBC Radio 3 and appears, or will appear, in Poetry London, PN Review and The London Magazine, among others. She is a Barbican Young Poet, a shadow trustee at MPT Magazine and has recently been accepted on the Ledbury Poetry Critics Programme.

WOUNDSONG

Annie Fan’s astonishing debut pamphlet interrogates the wound as a symbol of fertility, girlhood, queerness and immigrant identity: what does it mean to puncture, to cleave another person? Does a wounding have to be violent? In what ways can a wounding be tender? Can we speak to our wounds? Can they speak back? Do we inherit our wounds? Are there male wounds and female wounds? Is gender a wounding? How do we imagine our wounds in our dreams?

These poems feel fresh and inquisitive both formally and in terms of their contents. They herald a wonderful new voice in poetry.

SAMPLE POEM

Self Portrait with Rain

These are the things I grew myself,

maddening green from soil, scraping

silt from the backs of wrists

like some sacred deposit. In summer,

I’ll pull away clementines the size

of a fist and spit out pips all over

the lawn, heaving with moss

like thick clumps of hair in the shower.

I spend lifetimes washing,

find my hands over and over as I scrub

turnips, the early cherries, potatoes

damp with musk and leave them

on cool counters, open the windows

to each storm. I say: go away,

I do not want your dark water or

men in long coats; I can’t swallow

your measure or find enough

pillboxes to hold the pebbles.

Today, I press my chin to the ledge

of the window and unearth

my arms and hands, stained from damson

picking. The rain doesn’t stop. But,

somewhere: dawn and the hum of hollowing

seeds planted in dry weather, like a sigh

or shout or song for when the sky

breaks open and gives out

something kinder than light.

‘Annie Fan’s poems have a rare knack for balancing between vulnerability and assurance as they navigate such diverse histories as Kepler’s discoveries, a faraway famine, or the last days of Empress Wu Zetian. Bravely troubled by questions of difference and desire, they trouble us too – as all the best poems do '

Theophilus Kwek

TOWER POETRY COMPETITION 2018

Annie won the Commended prize in the 2018 Tower Poetry competition with her excellent poem about sisterhood and mathematics, ‘How to Invert a Hyperbolic Function’ which features in her debut pamphlet Woundsong.

‘I hope, and I think any poet hopes, really, that this pamphlet is playful — with gender, language and inheritance, with things shared and things solitary.’

WOUNDSONG

TOWER POETRY COMPETITION 2018

More from Annie!

More Verve Poetry Press Authors