Description
Following her debut book, 'Patterns of Mourning' Melissa Lee-Houghton has written a new collection of original, raw-edged poems that are concerned with all things both abject and sublime. Love meets violence, death meets clarity; the theme of sex dominates many of the poems as for the writer, it always brings about the question of domination and submission, of the will, if not the senses. She writes to try to find answers as to how we are to love; and if we can maintain loving relationships after abuse has happened. Early recollections and experiences find powerful resonance now that the writer is in her mid-twenties, and the newness of family life and marital love have given her the space to understand herself and her addiction to writing.
Many of these poems were composed during periods of 'illness' as Melissa's Bipolar symptoms have worsened over the years. She has also been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder; and the intense, confessional, blunt and argumentative tone in her work is her way of expressing her personality and her identity outside of medicine and psychiatry, outside of stereotypes and stigma.