Hot Sauce - Paperback

by Kaycee Hill (Author)

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.

Author Biography

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.