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That Broke into Shining Crystals
Reverberating with risk, this collection negotiates the darkness of injury, the potency and pain of revelation, and agency as song.
Trauma and vulnerability - violation and its aftershock - are explored within a framework of self-determination and radical queerness in Richard Scott's second collection. In three distinct yet interlocking parts, he documents what it is to have survived 'seismic assaults, the buried silences'. This is first pursued through still-life controlled arrangements in which time is frozen. In 'Coy', the lexicon of Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress' is repurposed to enact the collapse of language under the pressure of description. In the luminous title sequence, crystals and gemstones evoke themes of fracture and fixative, demonstrating Scott's power as a poet who casts an uncompromising but ultimately uplifting light. This book reverberates with risk as it negotiates the darkness of injury, the potency and pain of revelation, and agency as song.
Praise for Soho:
'Scott's project is as political as it is personal, and the kaleidoscopic picture of contemporary queerness he builds through these poems is as urgent as it is alluring.' A. K. Blakemore, Poetry London
'With his electric Soho, Richard Scott has arrived like a lightning bolt in our midst. In poetry that moves so fast we're left breathless, this is protean, irreverent, urgent work.' Sinéad Morrissey, T. S. Eliot Prize judge
'Richard Scott's Soho is the most gripping portrayal of queer lives I've read so far.' Daljit Nagra, Guardian
Trauma and vulnerability - violation and its aftershock - are explored within a framework of self-determination and radical queerness in Richard Scott's second collection. In three distinct yet interlocking parts, he documents what it is to have survived 'seismic assaults, the buried silences'. This is first pursued through still-life controlled arrangements in which time is frozen. In 'Coy', the lexicon of Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress' is repurposed to enact the collapse of language under the pressure of description. In the luminous title sequence, crystals and gemstones evoke themes of fracture and fixative, demonstrating Scott's power as a poet who casts an uncompromising but ultimately uplifting light. This book reverberates with risk as it negotiates the darkness of injury, the potency and pain of revelation, and agency as song.
Praise for Soho:
'Scott's project is as political as it is personal, and the kaleidoscopic picture of contemporary queerness he builds through these poems is as urgent as it is alluring.' A. K. Blakemore, Poetry London
'With his electric Soho, Richard Scott has arrived like a lightning bolt in our midst. In poetry that moves so fast we're left breathless, this is protean, irreverent, urgent work.' Sinéad Morrissey, T. S. Eliot Prize judge
'Richard Scott's Soho is the most gripping portrayal of queer lives I've read so far.' Daljit Nagra, Guardian
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
Published April 22, 2025
9 people are currently reading
96 people want to read
About the author
Richard Scott
3 books15 followersRichard Scott grew up in London and studied at the Royal College of Music and at Goldsmiths College. After working as an opera singer and presenting The Opera Hour on Resonance FM, Richard went on to win the Wasafiri New Writing Prize and become a Jerwood/Arvon Poetry mentee, a member of the Aldeburgh 8 and an Open Spaces artist resident at Snape Maltings in Suffolk. His pamphlet Wound (Rialto) won the Michael Marks Poetry Award 2016 and his poem ‘crocodile’ won the 2017 Poetry London Competition. Soho is his first book and took ten years to write.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
October 18, 2025
The first half of this collection was wonderful, the language a lesson in how to view the world. The second half not so much.
September 16, 2025
To be made into what you are. the aftermath of trauma. This collection is broken up into three parts. The first a take on still-life paintings, bringing them to life with a torturous abandon.
This sets in motion the intensity of the past and the weight it carries into our future. I felt it when he said “there is not abyss just this / immense patience”.
There’s something that I will always admire about poets, their ability to unleash their pain and create these beautiful translations. I say beautiful bc the past is excruciating enough and I like to revel in the beauty of it.
To make the most out of the worst.
[Thank you sm @faberbooks.us for this gifted copy!]
This sets in motion the intensity of the past and the weight it carries into our future. I felt it when he said “there is not abyss just this / immense patience”.
There’s something that I will always admire about poets, their ability to unleash their pain and create these beautiful translations. I say beautiful bc the past is excruciating enough and I like to revel in the beauty of it.
To make the most out of the worst.
[Thank you sm @faberbooks.us for this gifted copy!]
April 20, 2025
Rather than building an accumulative portrait, this collection states its themes clear as day in the first three pages, and, under barely different guises, presents them to us over and over again. Aside from some KILLER lines and some in-theory wonderful ideas, my overarching feeling here is a preached-at, relentless boredom.
May 15, 2025
“All my life I have been meeting others who suffered the same pressure - sub-atomic, neurological - of a love which is not love at all but instead is this attrition. Red sand. / You shouldn't even think about all that any more says so many people and websites. So I get busy writing poems. Conduits.” Richard Scott’s second poetry collection, That Broke into Shining Crystals, is even more stunning than his first, Soho. The poems here are painful, delicate, and at times transcendent — literally moving beyond the page and the pain of memory into glowing glimpses of beauty, healing, grace given to the self. The first third of the collection is a series of poems each based on a different still life painting, exploring the tension between inanimate object and active suffering. At times they are hard to face in their clarity: “A still life is a kind of ghost. Everything painted is dead now. These are ghost flowers, spooky little fly. O I have feelings inside of feelings, such compound feelings, like why can't I just fucking die and be done with all this annihilation, and how I miss his petal'd conversation. Look down to find the fly on your own arm. You are in bloom.” At other times they galvanise in their petition to goodness: “O rose, keep on stunning for me — / for all us boys who have been ruined by men.” The middle third, ‘Coy’, is a ‘vocabularyclept’, taking the words of Andrew Marvell’s brilliant 17th century poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’ and reconstituting them in a modern exploration of the limits of language. The final third uses crystals as a means of talking back to Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations, and are deeply imagistic and descriptive. “I live within these luminous fissures and gorge. Even my flashbacks - his face, his hands that broke me - now break into shining crystals. Are opal-tinted, seraphic.” “Dearest heart, cut out and shining, but you cannot be broken - even by this sheer terribleness.” By the time I finished the final, gorgeous poem, I was a teary mess. Scott’s unflinching devotion to truths actual and emotional is a dazzling light.
April 8, 2025
Thanks to NetGalley and Faber & Faber for the ARC!
Richard Scott’s That Broke into Shining Crystals is a gorgeous collection of poems that confidently occupy the tension between trauma and beauty.
Richly intertextual, the book converses with dozens of still life paintings to look for beautiful shapes in the shadow of childhood abuse. It sounds like an impossible premise, but that impossibility ultimately feels generative. Still life paintings always have a certain kind of staginess—the light is carefully controlled, and each object feels placed to perfection.
Scott constructs poems with this same kind of precision, but rather than trying to turn abuse into something “poetic,” he allows it to fracture and fissure through his work. He presents stately, elevated language, and just when it might start to feel a little too stilted, the blunt reality of trauma rips through it and adds a jagged edge. The poems become hollowed-out cathedrals; the heightened language begins to feel meaningful because of its failure. It simply cannot undo the horrific realities experienced by the speaker.
Even so, Scott highlights a persistent optimism that feels artful in and of itself—like hope is a trained skill in the speaker’s world. When we read lines like, “True plenty is untranslatable,” it feels less like resignation and more like celebration. Language can only do so much, but recognizing its limitations opens us to its possibilities. It cannot explain away pain, but it can be beautiful if we realize that beauty isn’t a solution—it isn’t meant to be “useful.”
Despite everything, there is still life.
That Broke into Shining Crystals is a difficult read, and not one that I would recommend lightly, but it is a book that will reward readers who choose to excavate its many layers.
Richard Scott’s That Broke into Shining Crystals is a gorgeous collection of poems that confidently occupy the tension between trauma and beauty.
Richly intertextual, the book converses with dozens of still life paintings to look for beautiful shapes in the shadow of childhood abuse. It sounds like an impossible premise, but that impossibility ultimately feels generative. Still life paintings always have a certain kind of staginess—the light is carefully controlled, and each object feels placed to perfection.
Scott constructs poems with this same kind of precision, but rather than trying to turn abuse into something “poetic,” he allows it to fracture and fissure through his work. He presents stately, elevated language, and just when it might start to feel a little too stilted, the blunt reality of trauma rips through it and adds a jagged edge. The poems become hollowed-out cathedrals; the heightened language begins to feel meaningful because of its failure. It simply cannot undo the horrific realities experienced by the speaker.
Even so, Scott highlights a persistent optimism that feels artful in and of itself—like hope is a trained skill in the speaker’s world. When we read lines like, “True plenty is untranslatable,” it feels less like resignation and more like celebration. Language can only do so much, but recognizing its limitations opens us to its possibilities. It cannot explain away pain, but it can be beautiful if we realize that beauty isn’t a solution—it isn’t meant to be “useful.”
Despite everything, there is still life.
That Broke into Shining Crystals is a difficult read, and not one that I would recommend lightly, but it is a book that will reward readers who choose to excavate its many layers.
April 23, 2025
Thank you to Faber & Faber, and Richard Scott for allowing me to read this beautiful collection of poetry before its publication date in exchange for an honest review.
TW: I highly, highly recommend that everyone interested in this book look at the content warnings before starting it.
While I am relatively new to reading more modern poetry, That Broke into Shining Crystals was a truly special and emotional read, filled with poems that absolutely broke me to my core, and others where I could not wait to move forward. I went back and forth with this review and landed on a 3, given that the last two sections were truly gut-wrenching and powerful.
That Broke into Shining Crystals is broken into three sections. The first, “Still Life,” was just not a collection that really spoke to me. I found myself enjoying the ideas, but it felt often like whiplash between ideas and style. The second and third sections, “Coy” and “That Broke into Shining Crystals” respectively, were the stars to me. I was so entranced and emotionally invested that I could not look away. Particularly, the second section was the star to me. The word choice often left me kinda confused, but the content was truly gorgeous and raw.
I think I would recommend this to anyone who is hoping for just unfiltered, raw emotion, and is interested in reading more modern poetry.
TW: I highly, highly recommend that everyone interested in this book look at the content warnings before starting it.
While I am relatively new to reading more modern poetry, That Broke into Shining Crystals was a truly special and emotional read, filled with poems that absolutely broke me to my core, and others where I could not wait to move forward. I went back and forth with this review and landed on a 3, given that the last two sections were truly gut-wrenching and powerful.
That Broke into Shining Crystals is broken into three sections. The first, “Still Life,” was just not a collection that really spoke to me. I found myself enjoying the ideas, but it felt often like whiplash between ideas and style. The second and third sections, “Coy” and “That Broke into Shining Crystals” respectively, were the stars to me. I was so entranced and emotionally invested that I could not look away. Particularly, the second section was the star to me. The word choice often left me kinda confused, but the content was truly gorgeous and raw.
I think I would recommend this to anyone who is hoping for just unfiltered, raw emotion, and is interested in reading more modern poetry.
February 22, 2025
"...a/mineral and glittering paint/brought forth from the very/centre, churning, of myself."
How do you write about abuse? In the case of this book, it's through a process of endless transformation: free-associative ekphrasis of still-life paintings, reassembling the component words of Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress", spinning the symbolic associations of gemstones into dreamlike stanzas. Some of the pieces in this collection are composed of one-word lines ("Still Life with Cup, Irises..."), another is a prose poem ("Magnetite"). All all fuelled by Scott's eye for commanding imagery—take his description of "lilies opening so hard they are/breaking their own backs", poised between beauty and violence—and ability to discuss abuse in a simultaneously confrontational yet playful way, threaded with elaborate conceits and psychological detail. The result is a text where, as the speaker of one of the poem says, "a histrionic lad is translating all his trauma into poems".
How do you write about abuse? In the case of this book, it's through a process of endless transformation: free-associative ekphrasis of still-life paintings, reassembling the component words of Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress", spinning the symbolic associations of gemstones into dreamlike stanzas. Some of the pieces in this collection are composed of one-word lines ("Still Life with Cup, Irises..."), another is a prose poem ("Magnetite"). All all fuelled by Scott's eye for commanding imagery—take his description of "lilies opening so hard they are/breaking their own backs", poised between beauty and violence—and ability to discuss abuse in a simultaneously confrontational yet playful way, threaded with elaborate conceits and psychological detail. The result is a text where, as the speaker of one of the poem says, "a histrionic lad is translating all his trauma into poems".
April 16, 2025
This collection of poetry did not speak to me. Perhaps I am too much of a poetry cynic. I found the poems hard to connect with, perhaps due to my lack of relation to the author's lived experience or because of the overwrought and overworked language.
The sections "Still Lifes" and "That Broke into Shining Crystals" have each poem named for a real still life or gemstone, respectively, with the theme carried throughout. Great idea, but the poems' contents fell somewhat short for me, and felt like the poet was trying to stretch a narrative over a particular painting or gemstone. By the end, it felt tired.
The middle section, 'Coy,' is the star of this collection, though unlike the other poems, this is a vocabularyclept. Perhaps this is why I liked it most of all: it had Scott's arrangement style, but not his vocabulary choice.
Thank you to NetGalley and Faber & Faber for the ARC.
The sections "Still Lifes" and "That Broke into Shining Crystals" have each poem named for a real still life or gemstone, respectively, with the theme carried throughout. Great idea, but the poems' contents fell somewhat short for me, and felt like the poet was trying to stretch a narrative over a particular painting or gemstone. By the end, it felt tired.
The middle section, 'Coy,' is the star of this collection, though unlike the other poems, this is a vocabularyclept. Perhaps this is why I liked it most of all: it had Scott's arrangement style, but not his vocabulary choice.
Thank you to NetGalley and Faber & Faber for the ARC.
April 16, 2025
3 stars ✨
I’m still very new to poetry so I really had no expectations heading into this one.
Scott managed to process trauma regarding childhood SA, transform, and provide hope in only a couple of lines……through ‘discussing’ crystals and rocks. Surprisingly, there are a lot more similarities than you would think. You typically read about trees and animals and seasons when nature is being used as a metaphor so this was refreshing.
I did prefer the first section of poems by a longggg shot. The third and final section was okay, but the second section was not digestible and I found honestly, kind of irritating to read.
Irregardless, Scott is an immensely talented poet and I absolutely would pick up more of his work!
I’m still very new to poetry so I really had no expectations heading into this one.
Scott managed to process trauma regarding childhood SA, transform, and provide hope in only a couple of lines……through ‘discussing’ crystals and rocks. Surprisingly, there are a lot more similarities than you would think. You typically read about trees and animals and seasons when nature is being used as a metaphor so this was refreshing.
I did prefer the first section of poems by a longggg shot. The third and final section was okay, but the second section was not digestible and I found honestly, kind of irritating to read.
Irregardless, Scott is an immensely talented poet and I absolutely would pick up more of his work!
March 21, 2025
4.5 stars. This collection of poems sent shivers down my spine on multiple occasions. It caught me off guard, and swept me away. Scott's prose is mighty and somehow also so delicate. The softness of each poem paired with the tense, biting, and gripping stories left me more than impressed. I love when I find a new poet to keep following! Thanks so much for the arc, Netgalley. Pick up this beautiful work from Richard Scott when you're looking to feel something, even if the feelings are a twisted and broken. Don't forget to check your TW's.
April 23, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley and Faber for an E-ARC! This E-ARC was sent to me in exchange for an honest review!
I did not enjoy this collection as much as I wanted to. The author used nasty and unnecessary language to articulate his thoughts and most of it was indistinguishable anyway. The emotion felt forced and unnatural, dry at some points. There was no reason for a majority of the stanzas.
If you're just getting into poetry, I don't recommend this particular collection.
I did not enjoy this collection as much as I wanted to. The author used nasty and unnecessary language to articulate his thoughts and most of it was indistinguishable anyway. The emotion felt forced and unnatural, dry at some points. There was no reason for a majority of the stanzas.
If you're just getting into poetry, I don't recommend this particular collection.
April 17, 2025
Quite ingenious. Divided into sections. Wonderful section about still life paintings - these are turned into poems. He also uses Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress weaving words and concepts into different stanzas. I have subscribed to Faber’s poetry book per month scheme which is why I appear to have the book before it’s been published.
June 19, 2025
Some interesting stuff, especially the sequence of poems on grooming inspired by Marvel's To His Coy Mistress. Ultimately however I found the efforts to articulate the raw physical experience by trying to break down and remould language honest but unsuccessful. The almost unrelenting focus on sexuality also felt a bit like playing into the hands of queer stereotypes.
June 22, 2025
i didn’t gel with this collection anywhere near as much as the poets previous.
for me the themes were maybe too plain to see at the start, i would have preferred to unpick the poems more.
having said that my favourite section was the first, i found these poems the most powerful and also the most readable.
massive tw for s*xual abuse.
for me the themes were maybe too plain to see at the start, i would have preferred to unpick the poems more.
having said that my favourite section was the first, i found these poems the most powerful and also the most readable.
massive tw for s*xual abuse.
February 23, 2025
Strong imagery to deal with a difficult theme. The Still Life sequence is particularly evocative. Enjoy is probably the wrong word but it is a powerful and thought-provoking collection, and the fact that something so traumatic can produce such art is an uplifting thought to take away.
March 25, 2025
Fabulous. Visceral. Nuanced. Every poem a masterpiece.
A hero’s journey from trauma to the freedom to live.
I admire the author’s courage to share his experience and his mastery of poetic writing.
A hero’s journey from trauma to the freedom to live.
I admire the author’s courage to share his experience and his mastery of poetic writing.
August 8, 2025
Powerful. I loved (or, at least, was moved and fascinated by) the series of still life poems. Some of those images will be with me for a while. And possibly come back to me every time I look at a still life with roses or cloth or apples or birds.
December 28, 2025
This is probably my book of the year. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, but I also haven't been able to review it because I don't know how I explain how much it means to me or how clever, imaginative and thought-provoking it is.
March 27, 2025
4.5… really cool, a bit intense tho!!
April 2, 2025
pięknie napisana książka o radzeniu sobie z traumą. najbardziej podobał mi się ostatni rozdział.
June 2, 2025
I just didn't enjoy this, I think the fault is in me since the other reviews are good and the blurb makes it seem like my thing but it just did nothing for me.
April 23, 2025
This is a defining poetry collection because I went into it with no expectations and no assumptions other than it was going to be queer, and at the recommendation of a bookseller who mentioned it was a beautiful mediation for trauma - I wanted to select a piece of work by random or by chance and this was vey much a chance encounter that ended up paying dividends. I was and am pleasantly surprised.
Having now read this a few weeks ago now, I recall the sensory pleasure that this gave me, it heightened my sense of smell, it made a cluster of visions in my mind and the words were peppered on my tongue like a sublingual sweet. Split into two parts, both were not only unique but equally riveting. The first part was through the lens of still life and second through crystals. I loved the dichotomy but both sections complimented each other and had the same underlying theme - trauma. The title alludes to Rimbaud and makes me want to engage with his poems too. This collection gave me the urge to go the National Portrait Gallery or Tate Britain and I would love to revist this by going to one of the two while I try to decipher some fine paintings as well as exploring symbols and motifs. I found the symbol and repetiveness of the colour yellow profound. It can be such a dull and drab colour. It also had me googling the art pieces he referenced as well as the names of crystals, some of them broken but all of them beautiful. It also had be exploring the stages of rocks, igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic - the beauty in fracture, I kind of kintsugi through the work and joy of poetry
I wanted to finish this quickly over my holiday but it demanded my patience - if anything it deseved it.
Having now read this a few weeks ago now, I recall the sensory pleasure that this gave me, it heightened my sense of smell, it made a cluster of visions in my mind and the words were peppered on my tongue like a sublingual sweet. Split into two parts, both were not only unique but equally riveting. The first part was through the lens of still life and second through crystals. I loved the dichotomy but both sections complimented each other and had the same underlying theme - trauma. The title alludes to Rimbaud and makes me want to engage with his poems too. This collection gave me the urge to go the National Portrait Gallery or Tate Britain and I would love to revist this by going to one of the two while I try to decipher some fine paintings as well as exploring symbols and motifs. I found the symbol and repetiveness of the colour yellow profound. It can be such a dull and drab colour. It also had me googling the art pieces he referenced as well as the names of crystals, some of them broken but all of them beautiful. It also had be exploring the stages of rocks, igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic - the beauty in fracture, I kind of kintsugi through the work and joy of poetry
I wanted to finish this quickly over my holiday but it demanded my patience - if anything it deseved it.
September 8, 2025
That Broke into Shining Crystals doesn’t attempt to mend or resolve the fractures it exposes; instead, it thrives in the tension of brokenness, where language refuses to hold. Scott’s poetry forces the reader into a space where experience shifts and slips, never quite caught.
It’s not a work that seeks answers but one that embraces the unanswered, the jagged, irrepressible fragments of existence. Each word, each image, is a wound that will not close, an echo that cannot be muffled. In this perpetual state of rupture, language becomes both subject and casualty—forever unsettled, forever freed.
[Full review available here]
It’s not a work that seeks answers but one that embraces the unanswered, the jagged, irrepressible fragments of existence. Each word, each image, is a wound that will not close, an echo that cannot be muffled. In this perpetual state of rupture, language becomes both subject and casualty—forever unsettled, forever freed.
[Full review available here]
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews