That Broke Into Shining Crystals

In three sequences, Richard Scott documents what it is to have survived ’seismic assaults, the buried silences’. The first is a gallery of still-life paintings, controlled arrangements of frozen time. ’Coy’ then breaks apart Andrew Marvell’s ’To His Coy Mistress’ and repurposes its lexicon to enact the collapse of language under the strain of scalding direct statement. Finally, in the luminous title sequence, crystals and gemstones evoke fracture and fixative, demonstrating Scott’s power as a poet to cast an uncompromising but ultimately uplifting light: ’For years I had no sound but his sweetness, his lye. /Thus I go slow. I song last. Least. The lower. /That which I had nor sound I may still song’.

Richard Scott was born in London in 1981. His debut collection, Soho (Faber), was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Polari First Book Prize. He teaches poetry at the Faber Academy and is a lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.