Hot Sauce

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.

• FOR YOU (FOR YOU)11 Muse12 A Caged Thing Freed13 What Love Looks Like14 Naturalist15 Kitchen16 Shapeshift18 The Collector19 Dreams of Home20 Ghost21 For the Hive22 Scuffing24 The Gift25 Last shift at St WinsMY GEOGRAPHIES29 Polystyrene Cup30 A SIDE32 B SIDE33 Elegy for Buster34 Night Shift35 In the queue at Motion36 At the train station a pigeon37 Day Visit at HMP Erlestoke38 Blessed40 Sleep Paralysis41 Leaving St. Ives42 A poem43 Seal Island, St Ives44 Oshun45 Self CareHAS IT COME TO THIS?48 Flying Ants49 Fresh Set50 A Woman on Shirley High Street51 On Grief52 Urban Kites53 The Marlands, Midday54 Hot Sauce55 Bully56 To Get Inside57 Vignettes about the New Forest58 Little Deaths60 Pendulum62 Spring Begins in Leigh WoodsSOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE LIGHT I FEEL THE SUN64 Leo Season65 Core Memories in Málaga66 Strip Tease67 Recurring Dream68 Remember69 Lauryn Hill at Boomtown70 Come Along with Me72 Hooked73 Dad, Eighteen74 Hallowed75 Bedroom Witch76 A Memory77 Roots78 Free Party79 Makeshift

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.