The Linen Way — published!

The author:

Read about Melissa here.

 The memoir:

Cover image and design by Claire Beynon.

 The content:

Passionate about poetry and seeking guidance to write her own, Melissa Green embarked on a Masters program at Boston University in 1981 and immediately caught the attention of her teacher, Derek Walcott, and his friend the Russian Joseph Brodsky. Giants of American poetry and Nobel prize winners, they recognized in her a literary peer with an innate and dazzling talent.

In a parallel reality, Melissa was living a knife-edge existence, her life an unpredictable and embattled odyssey between poetry and despair, a pendulum-swing between fervent, luminous writing and sudden, ferocious bouts of suicidal illness. In a black shipwreck of a house, she hid away for years, caring for her demanding and difficult grandmother.

That she survives is our blessing; that she has retrieved poetry from the abyss is a timeless boon. As poet Zireaux writes: … having travelled to the outer reaches of human experience …  with a fine-tuned lyre and Odyssean strength of purpose, Melissa Green reports her discoveries back home, in the language they demand.

In The Linen Way, Melissa walks the reader along the thin, perilous path between poetry’s affirmation of life and the unwelcome ghosts of hope apparently lost; a linen way, perhaps, but wrought also of fire and sulfur and the ironmonger’s hammer.

The rat:

It seems to have swelled Ratty’s head to be modelling the prototype Linen Way t-shirt, never mind the skew-whiff appliqué, or the fact that Lily-the-Pink has mislaid her sewing glasses (several pairs, up and down the country, along with earrings and necklaces) and doesn't necessarily notice loose threads or wonky seams. The newest ratadillo, Kawhia, is full of admiration and has made it her life's ambition to meet Melissa.

The Linen Way is available for 11 USD, in pdf, epub and Kindle-friendly formats, here.