Bite Your Tongue When You Give Me My Name

DescriptionFollowing 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. About the AuthorMelissa Lee-Houghton was born in Wythenshawe 1982 to a young mother whose unstable relationship with her husband caused the family to uproot. Melissa has no recollection of her father. She enjoyed a childhood made magical in its promise and naivety but the happiness was equally matched by disturbing and abusive experiences. By the age of 11, Melissa had seen a psychiatrist as she would no longer attend school and had begun a severe depression which lasted the duration of her school years and made it impossible for her to attend. Instead, she was treated and admitted to psychiatric services for anxiety, depression and self-harm, and the makings of what turned out to be full-blown Bipolar Affective moodswings and psychosis. She feels her illness is an enduring trauma with which she chronically battles with medications. Writing, to her, is necessity. Melissa has two children, and suffered PNI and Puerperal Psychosis following their births. Melissa's debut book, Patterns of Mourning is available through Chipmunka. Melissa is currently working on a new project focussing on composing literary 'portraits' of some wonderfully diverse people from all walks of life.