le jardin secret

le jardin secret” is a selection from the acclaimed debut volume “Soho” (Faber & Faber, 2018) by British poet Richard Scott. His poems are set against the backdrop of London’s gay district of Soho and are about a childhood in a homophobic society, about disturbing first sexual experiences, about shame and violence, but also about love and the healing power of the imagination. Scott consciously places himself in the tradition of queer poetry, for example in the programmatic poem “Stadtbibliothek, 1998”, where the lyrical I highlights the “queer subtext” of a heteronormative literary canon: “I / open the Golden Book of Poetry again and write COCK / in the margin.