Melete
Product details
- ISBN 9781780377575
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 21 May 2026
- Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Jennifer Lee Tsai’s first full-length poetry book is a compelling narrative exploring family history, intergenerational trauma, love, loss, migration and belonging from the perspective of a second-generation British Chinese identity. Melete interweaves dual cultures and heritages, moving from China and Hong Kong to Liverpool.
The mythic structure of the book relates to the three original Boeotian Muses – Melete, Mneme and Aoede. Named after the Muse of meditation and contemplation, Melete navigates the boundaries between life and art, personhood and subjectivity, states and places of spiritual transcendence.
This expansive book establishes a powerfully distinctive lyric voice in British poetry.
Jennifer Lee Tsai is a poet, writer and artist. Born in Bebington on the Wirral, she grew up in Liverpool. She has published two pamphlets, Kismet (ignitionpress, 2019) and La Mystérique (Guillemot Press, 2022), with her first book-length collection, Melete, published by Bloodaxe in 2026. A fellow of The Complete Works and a Ledbury Poetry Critic, she has received a Northern Writers Award for Poetry and is a winner of the Rebecca Swift Foundation’s Women Poets’ Prize. She has worked as a teacher of English to students in universities and colleges as well as within community settings. She is the recipient of an AHRC doctoral scholarship in Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool and an Artist in Residence at the Bluecoat’s studios through the Wittenham Bursary. Her poetry, essays and reviews have been published in publications including The Guardian, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Telegraph, The TLS and The White Review as well as on BBC Radio 4.
