Sunshine is the new collection from Next Generation Poet Melissa Lee-Houghton. A writer of startling confession, her poems inhabit the lonely hotel rooms, psych wards and deserted lanes of austerity Britain.
Sunshine combines acute social observation with a dark, surreal humour born of first-hand experience. Abuse, addiction and mental health are all subject to Lee-Houghton’s poetic eye. But these are also poems of extravagance, hope and desire, that stake new ground for the Romantic lyric in an age of social media and internet porn. In this new book of poems, Melissa Lee-Houghton shines a light on human ecstasy and sadness with blinding precision.
Includes ‘i am very precious’ – Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2016.
_
Praise for Sunshine
Sunshine reaches deep into the part of us we don’t want to look at and is all the more powerful, gut-wrenching and vital because of it.
James Rhodes
A wry, unflinching and knowing voice that collects the pieces of the torn-up world and brings them together in such a way that something is assuaged.
Mark Waldron
_
Melissa Lee-Houghton will be appearing at
17 Sep LONDON Poetry Book Fair
20 Sep LONDON Royal Festival Hall, Forward Prizes
28 Sep MANCHESTER Anthony Burgess Centre
8 Oct MANCHESTER Literature Festival
9 Oct CHELTENHAM Literature Festival
15 Oct DURHAM Book Festival