'Melete is the debut collection by the exceptionaJennifer 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. She is a fellow of The Complete Works, a Ledbury Poetry Critic, and a former Contributing Editor to Ambit. 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 being broadcast on BBC Radio 4. al poet Jennifer Lee Tsai, a Northern Writers’ Award winner in 2020. Jennifer’s collection follows on from her absorbing and expansive two pamphlets, Kismet (ignitionpress) and La Mystérique (Guillemot). The poems in Melete reflect on Jennifer’s upbringing in Liverpool, migration, memory and family history.' – Will Mackie, New Writing North (New and Recent Poetry from the North, Spring 2026)

‘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

'Melete, the Muse of Writing, sits alongside her sisters Song and Memory and Jennifer Lee Tsai's first collection is indeed a remarkable blend of the lyric and the narrative – in essence, a sustained and enthralling novel-in-songs. Every poem is part doorway, part mirror. In Melete, we are led into a world of prejudice and determination, hardship and resilience, but this is also a world of beginnings, becomings and the search for belonging and in it we can't help but discover ourselves.' – John Glenday

'This is such a moving and accomplished collection. There’s a maturity here, and a wonderful willingness to push ideas, to keep pursuing them beyond initial thoughts, and to test the limits of language, as well as tease out the shifting meanings of words in translation. There’s a remarkable range in the imagery of this collection, drawn from so many aspects of contemporary society, the natural world and history. Powerful and innovative poems which are by turns tender, angry, intellectual and poignant.' – Victoria Mackenzie

‘Jennifer Lee Tsai’s poetry gives us a crystalline language for loss, silence and memory, where “breaking stabilities…like phonetic entities” make complex the lyric fractals of familial love, violence and desire. The tremendous force of her linguistic authority here reclaims fragments of narratives – of otherness, exile and shame – to offer a self in movement, a voice fired by discovery.’ – Sandeep Parmar

‘Kismet explores with sensitivity the gaps between generations, cultures and belief systems…we encounter versions of femininity that defy stereotypes…Filled with darkness and hope, Kismet conjures a world where the divide between the living and the dead becomes indistinct, where inner strength and love can transcend fears and bring healing.’ – Jennifer Wong, The Poetry Review

‘Jennifer Lee Tsai is a great find, balancing a certain lightness of touch with a questing, plainspoken sincerity. She uses her imagery delicately and well, with irony…the overall atmosphere of her work is one of effortless mobility and freedom, never dragging the reader down. The poems set in Hong Kong are standouts…’ – Bidisha, The Poetry Review

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 full-length poetry book, 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.