This poem was commissioned for DADA Winter Festival 2025 #DDFIExtra.
Jennifer Lee Tsai is an award-winning poet, writer and artist. She was born in Bebington and grew up in Liverpool. She is a fellow of The Complete Works, a Ledbury Poetry Criticand a former Contributing Editor to Ambit. Her poetry and literary criticism are widely featured in publications including The Guardian, The Poetry Review, Poetry London,The Telegraph, The TLS & The White Review as well as on BBC Radio 4. She is the author of two poetry pamphlets, Kismet (ignitionpress, 2019) and La Mystérique (Guillemot Press, 2022). Jennifer has received a Northern Writers Award for Poetryand is a winner of the Rebecca Swift Foundation’s Women Poets’ Prize. She has worked extensively as a lecturer and teacher of English to students in universities and colleges as well as within community settings.She is the recipient of an AHRC doctoral scholarship in Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool and an Artist in Residence at the Bluecoat. Her first full-length poetry collection, Melete, is forthcoming with Bloodaxe in May 2026.
To Do Something Beautiful
When I was a child and happy all day long, I fell in love with Beauty.
I found her in the pages of books, in literature, in music –
listening to the symmetry of Bach,the bright joy of Mozart.
I sought Beauty, in all shapes, forms and guises.
She beguiled me, first, in fairytales –
the temptation of a red apple, the perfect glass slipper,
the spikes of a poisoned spinning wheel,
immersed in the depths of a verdant forest orturquoise ocean,
an encounter with the beast, a wild wolf,
the gallant prince, swift to your rescue.
I witnessed the transformation of a humble frog,
succumbed to the charms of amalevolent witch.
I saw, then, the shadow side of Beauty –
the presence of evil and violence,
as when Yeats lamented in 1916
after the execution of the revolutionary leaders,
the Easter rising in Ireland –
A terrible beauty is born.
I don’t wish to beautify the trauma of the past or present.
Though this winter has felt colder than many –
a rollercoaster ride led by harbingers of doom –
the sisters of fear, anger, grief, depression, loss,
who, like the Dark Bordered Beauty butterfly,
fly from dusk and at dawn on damp woodland
and wet heathland, their ochre-yellow
wings outlined by a purplish-brown edge,
seductive insects flickering on the periphery
of our consciousness. Don’t let them in.
In stillness, observe such emotions from a distance.
In these fragmented timeswe dwell in,
I urge you now, to make something whole –
Last Christmas, with my mixed race, half Chinese,
quarter Irish, quarter Scottish niece,
we watched the Disney film, ‘Frozen’,
where Elsa remains isolated in the kingdom of Arendelle,
estranged from her sister, her people. My heart was numb –
I was in my own castle of ice, though I could never be a heroine
like Elsa, blonde, blue-eyed, American, Euro-centric,
I saw the parallels to Elsa – hypersensitivity, anxiety, social masking,
Be the good girl you always have to be, conceal, don’t show.
The sadness of her loneliness, the realisation
of her secret power and the epiphany –
perform an act of true love, do something beautiful.
What does it mean to do something beautiful?
An embodied gesture, a gentle word, a kind action.
To witness the power of nature, the boundlessness of sky,
the hills and distant mountains of your youth or maturity,
the sparkle of silver starlight, radiance of opal moonlight,
the golden glories of sun, a lush field of wildflowers,
the smile of your beloved, a child or parent,
a passing strangerwho is your neighbour.
What is the point of beauty in an imperfect world
like ours? The philosopher Simone Weil believed
beauty and affliction were the two things
that can pierce the human heart.
Beauty – the power of healing, the tender smile of divine reality,
Affliction – the power of revealing, malheur– an emptiness, a void,
where the endurance of suffering illuminates a higher reality
on the other side. So, shine your own light, dispel all doubts
forfamily, friends, neighbours, I ask you today,
in your own way, to mend this broken world, do something beautiful.