Jennifer Lee Tsai, who is studying for a PhD in creative writing at the University of Liverpool, has published her debut full-length collection with Bloodaxe. Melete explores family history, intergenerational trauma, love, loss and belonging through the perspective of a second-generation British Chinese identity. Melete interweaves dual cultures and heritages through narratives of memory, migration and mysticism across Liverpool, China and Hong Kong.
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 and ecstasies. This expansive collection establishes a powerfully distinctive lyric voice in British poetry.
Here is just some of the praise for Jennifer’s work:
‘These extraordinary poems stage a reckoning – a woman refusing the labels imposed upon her and naming herself Melete, asserting her right to forge her own identity. They speak powerfully against exoticism, stereotyping, and the manifold forms of racism experienced by the Chinese in Britain. At the same time, they enact the Chinese tenet of ancestral veneration, animating the distinct presences of forebears and honouring the multiple roots - from China and within England itself – through which the speaker comes into being. This is a fierce and intelligent collection, threaded with moments of ars poetica, in which writing becomes a means of inscribing the self into voice.' – Hannah Lowe
'Powerful and distinct, Jennifer’s poems weave historical and personal trauma into a vivid, striking exploration of family, heritage, and personhood. Her work balances emotional depth, clarity, and sharp wit. At times meditative and lyrical, at others bold and incisive, Jennifer offers poetry that is both intimate and resonant.' – Romalyn Ante
'Rooted in Liverpool yet haunted by Canton, Hong Kong and the villages of the Hakka diaspora, these poems braid family myth with political history, from famine and migration to race riots and pandemic violence. The pages move between the intimate and the collective, exploring inheritance as Jennifer Lee Tsai revises the tradition to update it to our moment, revising how we speak. What is the deep urgency, necessity here? The act of writing becomes a correction, a ritual for justice, rebirth. The language itself enacts fragmentation, reconstruction. The sound becomes meaning, a longing is embedded in phonetics. This is a diaspora poetics, yes, but one that elevates personal trauma into archetype without losing specificity – the lover becomes Minotaur, the speaker Ariadne. The book gives us a generous abundance of visually arresting images that are both memorable and cinematic. This is an impressive debut.' – Ilya Kaminsky
'“I wait for the secret unknown in writing,” writes Jennifer Lee Tsai, attenuating a reader to the possibility and reflux of a literature that is both “tender” and “extravagant”. Melete’s experiment conjoins intimacy and dissent in ways that “remain unknown”. The secret recedes, mutating in each poem to become the presence of a beloved… And sometimes, that’s us.' – Bhanu Kapil