Soho

‘Outstanding . . . Scott’s tone is sometimes splendidly, defiantly drama-queenly . . . This is the most impressive debut since Andrew McMillan’s Physical’

[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.

'A portrait of gay shame both profound and precise in its prismatic exploration of the queer self ... a vital, visceral debut.'

‘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.’

'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.'

'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.'