Soho (Faber Poetry) - Softcover

Scott, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571338917 ISBN 13: 9780571338917

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2018

Synopsis

In this intimate and vital debut, Richard Scott creates an uncompromising portrait of love and gay shame. Examining how trauma becomes a part of the language we use, Scott takes us back to our roots: childhood incidents, the violence our scars betray, forgotten forebears and histories. The hungers of sexual encounters are underscored by the risks that threaten when we give ourselves to or accept another. But the poems celebrate joy and tenderness, too, as in a sequence re-imagining the love poetry of Verlaine.

The collection crescendos to Scott's tour de force, 'Oh My Soho!', where a night stroll under the street lamps of Soho Square becomes a search for true lineage, a reclamation of stolen ancestors, hope for healing, and, above all, the finding of our truest selves.

About this title

Review:

'Outstanding . . . Scott's tone is sometimes splendidly, defiantly drama-queenly . . . This is the most impressive debut since Andrew McMillan's Physical' Source: Literary Review

[This collection] demonstrate[s] a dazzling range and control of form - but these aren't fireworks shot into daylight. Scott's project is as political as it is personal, and the kaleidoscopic picture of contemporary queerness he builds through these poems is as urgent as it is alluring... Dark, joyous and as fierce as a love-bite: read Soho now. Author: A K Blakemore Source: Poetry London

'A portrait of gay shame both profound and precise in its prismatic exploration of the queer self ... a vital, visceral debut.' Author: Jade Cuttle Source: Poetry Review

'Richard Scott's stunning debut collection Soho is a passionate and sometimes furious love letter to the LGBTQ+ community and its chequered history, revelling in the beautiful joy of sexual identity and mourning scars of past violence. The collection leaps vividly to life in the titular poetic sequence Soho, a wondering journey through London's Soho - if you ever get the chance to see Richard Scott read live, jump on that opportunity ASAP.' Source: Marie Claire

'Soho is a hyper-sexualised exhibition of vulnerability and trauma, at once violent and tender. Scott combines a uniquely verdant lyricism with his precise, excoriating, wit ... Asking us to remain with, even to interrogate, our own feelings of discomfort, Soho makes for powerful, urgent and deeply relevant reading.' Author: Nell Osborne Source: The Manchester Review

'By turns explicit and playful, elegiac and defiant, Richard Scott's Soho draws on the fiercer traditions of queer poetry without ultimately depending on those who have gone before. The result is a debut not bound by allegiance to some generalised category but liberated by joy and clear execution ... Soho so brilliantly breaks new ground. Scott and his poetry live in a world that we inhabit, but the sure eye and fierce joy of this book also make it a new world to rejoice in.' Author: Patrick Davidson Roberts Source: Poetry School

Book Description:

Debut collection presenting an uncompromising portrait of love and shame within London's Soho community

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0571338917
• ISBN 13: 9780571338917
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 88