Winner of the James Berry Poetry Prize

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.

About the Author

Kaycee Hill is a poet, creative and professional writing graduate, 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 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 read her poem 'Scuffing' in the British Museum's Refugee Week YouTube event The Poetry of Witness: Writing about Displacement, Migration and Exile in 2021. Kaycee 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. She believes it is a role wherein you learn everything there is to know about humanity. Kaycee defines herself as an urban voyeur, with much of her urge to write taken from the spry mundanity of inner-city life. 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.

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



Book Information
ISBN 9781780376370
Author Kaycee Hill
Format Paperback
Page Count 72
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 138mm * 7mm