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.
Costa judges' comment: “This collection is necessary, raw and hypnotic in its honesty.”
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.
'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
Author
About Melissa Lee-Houghton
Melissa Lee-Houghton was announced as a Next Generation Poet in 2014. Her first and second collections are published by Penned in the Margins. Beautiful Girls was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her poem ‘i am very precious’ was shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. She has received a Northern Writers’ Award for her fiction. She lives in Blackburn, Lancashire.
