Hot Sauce

by Kaycee Hill

Overview

In her award-winning debut collection Kaycee Hill frankly explores coming of age as a woman – and the intricacies of connection and memory – against an urban-pastoral landscape.

Raging with vivid, smoky lyricism and full-blooded imagery, Kaycee Hill’s poems are both a beginning and a continuation. Reflecting on her life and those in it, as well as first-times, underground scenes and the female body, she looks towards what is unflinchingly personal, and also outwards: towards family and strangers, nature and place, and a world that shapeshifts before us.
Hot Sauce is a searing first collection that captures the visceral vulnerabilities of navigating life on the cusp. Winner of the James Berry Poetry Prize.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780376370
Publisher:	Bloodaxe Books
Publication date:	12/05/2023
Pages:	72
Product dimensions:	6.25(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Kaycee Hill is a poet and digital mixed media artist. Now based in Southampton, she was born in Winchester and grew up in a working-class, mixed-heritage household – British and Caribbean – in Andover. She spent the past five years working within the healthcare sector as a domiciliary carer and as a support worker for adults with mild learning difficulties. Kaycee was selected for Poetry Ambassadors during the height of the pandemic, was a shortlisted poet for the Poetry London Mentoring Scheme 2020, and has been commended for her poetry by The Young Poets Network. She was one of the three winners of the inaugural James Berry Poetry Prize in 2021, and her first book-length collection, Hot Sauce, is published by Bloodaxe Books in 2023.

Table of Contents

FOR YOU (FOR YOU)
    11     Muse
    12     A Caged Thing Freed
    13     What Love Looks Like
    14     Naturalist
    15     Kitchen
    16     Shapeshift
    18     The Collector
    19     Dreams of Home
    20     Ghost
    21     For the Hive
    22     Scuffing
    24     The Gift
    25     Last shift at St Wins

MY GEOGRAPHIES
    29     Polystyrene Cup
    30     A SIDE
    32     B SIDE
    33     Elegy for Buster
    34     Night Shift
    35     In the queue at Motion
    36     At the train station a pigeon
    37     Day Visit at HMP Erlestoke
    38     Blessed
    40     Sleep Paralysis
    41     Leaving St. Ives
    42     A poem
    43     Seal Island, St Ives
    44     Oshun
    45     Self Care

HAS IT COME TO THIS?
    48     Flying Ants
    49     Fresh Set
    50     A Woman on Shirley High Street
    51     On Grief
    52     Urban Kites
    53     The Marlands, Midday
    54     Hot Sauce
    55     Bully
    56     To Get Inside
    57     Vignettes about the New Forest
    58     Little Deaths
    60     Pendulum
    62     Spring Begins in Leigh Woods

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE LIGHT I FEEL THE SUN
    64     Leo Season
    65     Core Memories in Málaga
    66     Strip Tease
    67     Recurring Dream
    68     Remember
    69     Lauryn Hill at Boomtown
    70     Come Along with Me
    72     Hooked
    73     Dad, Eighteen
    74     Hallowed
    75     Bedroom Witch
    76     A Memory
    77     Roots
    78     Free Party
    79     Makeshift

Editorial Reviews

"Kaycee Hill’s urban eco-poems are always awake to the beauty that can be found in unexpected places – from a makeshift bird-feeder to her mother’s 'cinnamon stick / fingers busy making roll-ups'. In this thrilling first collection, her lyric imagination takes us on a journey through the complexities of coming of age in a small working-class town. The heat of Hill’s sensuous imagery 'rages down the throat', searing our tastebuds and leaving us craving more."—Aviva Dautch

"From dancehalls, grime raves, to prisons, kitchens and gardens, Kaycee Hill’s poems excavate an archive of memories with synaesthetic dexterity. A robin’s red breast transforms into 'the thumping heart of a young naked ash tree'. And queuing crowds become 'shoals of black sea bass'. These poems of place transform the contemporary into a mythic lyrical landscape, where images like "I felt one hundred hymens breaking like bird’s skulls" conjure up a rich surreal tapestry with dark folkloric undertones. Nature is a vivid backdrop with filmic effect. The iconic music of Sade, Corrine Bailey Rae, Genuine, Diana Ross and the Supremes demarcate era and time. Kaycee Hill’s poems linger on the tongue like hot pepper sauce."—Malika Booker

From the Publisher