Jennifer Lee Tsai Readings
'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
Jennifer Lee Tsai’s first full-length poetry book Melete, published by Bloodaxe in May 2026, 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.
Jennifer Lee Tsai is a poet, writer and artist. Born in Bebington on the Wirral, she grew up in Liverpool, where she still lives. 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. 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.
Melete was longlisted for the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection 2026 (one of the Forward Prizes).
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An in-depth conversation between Jennifer Lee Tsai and Natalie Linh Bolderston went online in Poetry London on 3 July 2026. They were discussing the connections between their debut collections. Read here.
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'Melete is the debut collection by the exceptional 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)
‘Debut poets are so often described as “daring” that the word has lost its shine. However, in the first full-length collection by Jennifer Lee Tsai – a Liverpool-based fellow of the Complete Works programme founded by Bernardine Evaristo – its true meaning glimmers through. This courage is shaped by moving stories of her family’s migration to the UK […] “With this – she writes herself / back into existence,” Lee Tsai writes in Rebirth. It is words, after all, that first provided her with an escape, lifting her from the monotony of pressing lids on to food containers in her family’s Chinese takeaway, to lyrical flights that would make any poet proud.’ – Jade Cuttle, The Observer (Poetry Books of the Month), on Melete
Melete was well reviewed by Rishi Dastidar in his best recent poetry feature which ran online in The Guardian on 5 June 2026. Read here.
'... a landmark work about the British south-east Asian experience.' – Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian (The best recent poetry)
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Jennifer Lee Tsai launched Melete on publication day at Toppings St Andrews, and then at Bluecoat in Liverpool on 3 June 2026. She gave a pre-publication reading at Cork International Poetry Festival in May 2026. Scroll down to see a video of her joint online Bloodaxe launch with Tishani Doshi.
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FORTHCOMING READINGS
Tuesday 22 September 2026: 7pm-8.30pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, Edinburgh
43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB
Three Poets at Lighthouse: Launching Jennifer Lee Tsai's Melete and Jay Gao's The Dead One... with Agata Maslowska
Joint poetry book launch at Lighthouse Bookshop in Edinburgh. Jennifer Lee Tsai will be reading from her debut Melete alongside Jay Gao who has a new book with Carcanet and Agata Maslowska who has a collection with Bad Betty Press.
Event: £4 (redemable against a book)
Buy book & attend event: £14
For in-person and online ticket bookings, see here.
Sunday 4 October, 7.30pm
Jennifer Lee Tsai and Cathy Galvin at Wirral Poetry Festival
The Church Hall, Port Sunlight, Wirral, CH62 5DL
Two Bloodaxe poets explore the connections between ancestry, class, language and place. This event will be BSL signed.
Tickets: £6 for online bookings, £7 On the Door (Subject to availability). Carers Accompanying adults Free with Access Card
More details and booking here.
PAST EVENTS & RECORDINGS
Tuesday 19 May 2026, online launch event for Melete
Tishani Doshi and Jennifer Lee Tsai joined us for this launch event for new May 2026 titles. Patricia Smith was originally advertised as taking part but was unable to due to unforeseen circumstances. Both Tishani and Jennifer celebrated the publication of their new books by reading selections from them and discussing their work with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley.
This free Bloodaxe launch event was streamed on YouTube Live and is now available on this YouTube page: https://youtube.com/live/4x0gzWrAClU
'Fallen Star' by Jennifer Lee Tsai, Tmesis Theatre, 4 October 2020
Jennifer Lee Tsai reads her poem 'Fallen Star', which is now published in her debut collection Melete. The first line is inspired by a line from the Chinese folk tale The Assistant Thunder God.
'Fallen Star' was commissioned by Tmesis Theatre in 2020 as part of a collaborative digital project entitled Lone Women.
In 2021, the film 'Fallen Star' was selected for the Sao Carlos VideoDance Festival in Brazil. In 2025, it was selected to be screened in the Bluecoat Liverpool's gallery as part of an artists' season entitled But Does It Speak? which explored the work of artists who use poetry, fiction, writing and speech to establish and alter visual worlds.
Lone Women was a digital project from Tmesis Theatre featuring work by five writers based in the North of England.
[23 March 2026]
