Böcker av Romalyn Ante

Born on the fiesta of San Sebastian in her hometown of Lipa Batangas, Romalyn Ante left the Philippines at 16, when her mother – a nurse in the NHS – brought the family to the UK. The poems in her debut collection, Antiemetic for Homesickness, are a bridge between these two worlds: lush with the smells and tastes of home back in the Philippines, they piercingly explore notions of identity, homeland and heritage across cultures, languages and the place one calls home.Soaked in a rich landscape of memory, Philippine mythology, and folklore, and studded with Tagalog, her poems speak of the ache of assimilation and the complexities of belonging, but also the healing and restoration that can be found through her work as a nurse. From a talented young poet already garnering prizes and praise, this is a debut alive with vitality and possibility, a feast for the senses, and one that offers a dazzlingly unique perspective on identity in an ever-expanding world.

this charms the buried light of stars -this deflects bullets - this unblooms a war -In some Filipino clans, parents pass down to each child an agimat, an amulet or charm, in the hope its magic will protect and empower them. In a world of daily pain and loss, Romalyn Ante's second collection asks how do we keep safe what we hold most dear? At the dawn of the pandemic, the poet - a practising nurse in the NHS - is thrown onto the frontlines of the war against COVID-19, and finds herself questioning what it means to fight, and what it takes to heal. Past conflicts swim into the now: when the poet falls in love with a man of Japanese heritage, it forces a reckoning with her family's suffering under Japan's brutal wartime occupation of the Philippines. Elsewhere, we meet the irrepressible, many-breasted goddess Mebuyan, the poet's alter ego. In Philippine myth, Mebuyan nurses the spirits of departed children in the underworld, but here she watches over young people in crisis - a girl who can't stop cutting herself, a teenager who has leapt from a railway viaduct. These are poems of strength and solace - they quiver with heart, feeling a way toward hope.

In 2017, The Poetry School and Nine Arches Press launched their nationwide Primers scheme in search of exciting new voices in poetry, with Hannah Lowe and Jane Commane as selecting editors. After reading through hundreds of anonymous entries, three poets emerged as clear choices: Romalyn Ante, Sarala Estruch and Aviva Dautch.