Marabou, Jane Yeh's first book of poems, is a meditation on the nature of artifice, and on the self. Her snapshots freeze fraught instants in the lives of a broad cast of characters: the horror movie mummy, an Elizabethan shoemaker, a flock of Cumbrian sheep; there's Harry Potter's owl and Oscar Wilde, two European princesses...In these beautifully crafted poems, her personae address the themes of love, lust, glamour and desperation with wit and flair. Hers is the language of fashion, espionage, revenge tragedy; her taut pressure-packed lines combine vivid detail and bold confession and reach unexpected emotional truths.

Marabou has been shortlisted for the 2005 Whitbread Poetry Award, as well as for the 2005 Forward Prize for best first collection.

2008-04-07 No plain Jane

A vivid and remarkable mimic with lyrical skills to match, I highly rate Jane Yeh's first book of poems 'Marabou'.Split into three sections the poems have a unique ability to inhabit- infact 'become'- different characters and real people in history and time; as well as possesing a wonderful witty anthromorphism which includes an owl and a Cumbrian sheep!
What is striking in Yeh is her empathy with people and places that official history ignores.For example the opening poem "Correspondence" is about unrequited love and sets the tone for a beautiful encapsulation of human fraility .This is brilliantly done by using a variety of literary and artistic devices: tableaux's, friezes, Self portaits( Vermeer, Watteau) and film 'frames' poignantly reflect the temporaneous nature of our existence(s).She records the history of human consciousness, not just the big events.For instance reportage by someone on the moments before Mount Vesuvius erupts or imagining Mao Tse-Tung in Paris as a young man.All in all a superb debut.