Jennifer Lee Tsai’s first full-length collection explores family history, intergenerational trauma, love, loss and belonging through the perspective of a second-generation British Chinese identity. Named after one of the three original Boeotian Muses, the Muse of meditation and contemplation, this expansive book establishes a powerful lyric voice – interweaving narratives of memory, migration and mysticism across Liverpool, China and Hong Kong, dual cultures and heritages.
Comprising three distinct sections, which brings together Lee Tsai’s previous two pamphlets, Kismet and La Mystérique as well as new, uncollected work, Melete navigates personhood, subjectivity and the multitudes of the lyric ‘I’, transforming into states and places of spiritual transcendence and ecstasies.