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Clean
In this volume, Scott-Patrick Mitchell propels us into the seething mess of the methamphetamine crisis in Australia today. These poems roil and scratch, exploring the precarious life of addiction and its sleep deprivation. From an unsteady and unsavoury life, we are released into the joy of a recovery made through sheer hard work.
Even in the disintegration, the poet points us towards love and carries tenderness every day in memory. Scott-Patrick Mitchell’s decades of spoken-word practice has enabled a fine tuning on the page when, for so many readers, we enter into an alien zone of unknowing.
Even in the disintegration, the poet points us towards love and carries tenderness every day in memory. Scott-Patrick Mitchell’s decades of spoken-word practice has enabled a fine tuning on the page when, for so many readers, we enter into an alien zone of unknowing.
- GenresPoetry
110 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
August 23, 2024
IM A SPM LOVER FIRST, HUMAN (OTHER) SECOND
September 9, 2022
After I washed the dishes last night, I sat down with a glass of wine to read Scott-Patrick Mitchell's first full-length collection, Clean. I read it right through. Divided into three parts, Dirty, The Sleep Deprivation Diaries & Clean, it was impossible to put down at the end of Dirty, with my jaw clenched and desperate for relief. I found it in Clean. Not only is each poem a triumph of language the speaker is on a journey, and we get to go too in the safety of our comfortable reading chair. There is a human with a beating heart behind the gritty reality of life, loss and addiction in every poem and the collection is curated perfectly. There is conflict, climax and resolution. This is an unforgettable story. An unveiling of your neighbourhood.
May 30, 2022
A collection of poetry, centered around drug user and recovery.
I find with poetry that I often need to sit with it afterwards and let the words sink in. This collection, I feel, will be no different- particularly as it's a topic that hits close to home for me, though in a different way to the author.
My favourite piece so far is the 9-part Clean about the days after recovery and the process by which one takes to become, well, clean.
This will be a book I'll pick over for the next few days, I feel, re-reading passages and murmuring stanzas aloud as I let it all wash over me.
I find with poetry that I often need to sit with it afterwards and let the words sink in. This collection, I feel, will be no different- particularly as it's a topic that hits close to home for me, though in a different way to the author.
My favourite piece so far is the 9-part Clean about the days after recovery and the process by which one takes to become, well, clean.
This will be a book I'll pick over for the next few days, I feel, re-reading passages and murmuring stanzas aloud as I let it all wash over me.
January 30, 2023
familiar is only an ache.
(from “inner pity poems”)
We burn
ourselves alive
from the inside.
(from “Co-Dependency (How Terror Forms)”)
(from “The Sleep Deprivation Diaries”)
(from “inner pity poems”)
We burn
ourselves alive
from the inside.
(from “Co-Dependency (How Terror Forms)”)
. from out the corner of my sightparanoiaparanoiaparanoia
shadow people wave hello
. see now how conversations
drop
. crash clatter bang into every
. can’t remember where i
. so easily distracted by
. sleep will claim us
. sleep will claim
. sleep will
. sleep
(from “The Sleep Deprivation Diaries”)
February 21, 2022
Scott-Patrick Mitchell pulls us into the body and pain of addiction before finally releasing us into the hard-won beauty of recovery. He takes the prose poem and twists it till it sings.
April 23, 2023
Scott-Patrick Mitchell's debut collection wrestles with the spectre and power of addiction, and with the spectre and power of coming clean.
Knowing of SPM's place as a performance poet, I read the collection with this in mind, and the power of each poem took on an intensity and veracity I could not have imagined in a timbre of hopelessness and hope. There is creative and clever wordplay, which to the eye, is amplified by the ear.
When I am reading a collection of poetry, there will often be a line that resonates with me as my way of accessing and understanding the poems. "What are eyelids if not parantheses" (How Joy Arises from the third section of the collection, Clean) was one of these. Reading the first section, Dirty, dealing with addiction, I did not want to feel like I was a voyeur to such suffering, but I was taken into the world of addiction by SPM's eye to help me see and understand.
The second section, The Sleep Deprivation Diaries, it was this line, "How soil unlearns a pattern when tilled too much" (In Somnolence, again from the third section, Clean) that helped me to walk through the terror and pain of coming clean.
The third section of the collection, Clean, weaves itself into you, threading you through with colour, memory, relationships, and you will sit with it until "One day I will make friends with the weight of this" (Ingredients For Grief Imagined Endings 3).
A superb debut.
Knowing of SPM's place as a performance poet, I read the collection with this in mind, and the power of each poem took on an intensity and veracity I could not have imagined in a timbre of hopelessness and hope. There is creative and clever wordplay, which to the eye, is amplified by the ear.
When I am reading a collection of poetry, there will often be a line that resonates with me as my way of accessing and understanding the poems. "What are eyelids if not parantheses" (How Joy Arises from the third section of the collection, Clean) was one of these. Reading the first section, Dirty, dealing with addiction, I did not want to feel like I was a voyeur to such suffering, but I was taken into the world of addiction by SPM's eye to help me see and understand.
The second section, The Sleep Deprivation Diaries, it was this line, "How soil unlearns a pattern when tilled too much" (In Somnolence, again from the third section, Clean) that helped me to walk through the terror and pain of coming clean.
The third section of the collection, Clean, weaves itself into you, threading you through with colour, memory, relationships, and you will sit with it until "One day I will make friends with the weight of this" (Ingredients For Grief Imagined Endings 3).
A superb debut.
May 16, 2024
In their decorated poetry collection, 'Clean,' Scott-Patrick Mitchell presents a journey toward that titular destination in three parts. The poet engagingly utilizes form to reflect consciousness throughout. Mitchell opens with an epigraph that signals the commencement of a collection defined by transparency and vulnerability: “Addiction is a quiet mouth and it doesn’t care who it swallows.
'Clean' corrected so many shameful assumptions about those that struggle with addiction. Prime among them, that the addict is not lacking self-awareness, but merely the power to overcome the weakness they know afflicts them.
My favs were: 'inner pity poems,' the epic that is 'Sleep Deprivation Diaries' (also the middle section of the collection) and ;binding spell', which made me cry with the resolve of it all.
It's impossible to read this connection without your heart going through it with SPM. I was so emotionally invested in the incredible accomplishment that is getting Clean.
'Clean' corrected so many shameful assumptions about those that struggle with addiction. Prime among them, that the addict is not lacking self-awareness, but merely the power to overcome the weakness they know afflicts them.
My favs were: 'inner pity poems,' the epic that is 'Sleep Deprivation Diaries' (also the middle section of the collection) and ;binding spell', which made me cry with the resolve of it all.
It's impossible to read this connection without your heart going through it with SPM. I was so emotionally invested in the incredible accomplishment that is getting Clean.
January 15, 2023
I really enjoyed this collection. I love Scott-Patrick's poetic prose style, and his description of love and moments of wonder or revelation. At first, I felt I couldn't personally connect very much with the drug addiction side of things, as I have no exposure to this at all, and have never been part of or witnessed drug addiction and/or recovery. Reading Scott-Pattrick's poems did, however, get me thinking about the nature of addiction and rethinking my presumptions about the circumstances surrounding the development of addiction. And to be lulled into such engagement in the topic through beautiful and clever word play was an eye-opening treat. Fantastic book, well deserving of all the recognition it has received thus 😊
May 28, 2022
This is a book of immense depth. Words are chosen carefully, and stitched together on every page to create something truly magnificent. At times painfully raw, always honest, Scott-Patrick Mitchell allows the reader to immerse themselves in the journey, to savour the highs and lows and plateaus, and be changed by the experience. A true feast for eyes and mind-buy it, read it, rejoice in it, read it again.
April 9, 2022
A beautiful work of poetry exploring gender, drugs, sexuality and sobriety among other things.
My favourite quote comes "This is not a manifesto" the last stanza. "And, for now, I shall identify as human, because it is the only word I know for other".
My favourite quote comes "This is not a manifesto" the last stanza. "And, for now, I shall identify as human, because it is the only word I know for other".
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 18, 2022
What a collection this is! Described as 'exploring the precarious life of addiction and sleep depravation', there's a tenderness and intimacy in every poem: a lightning strike through the heart; and a voice I fell in love with instantly. Read it.
November 4, 2025
Wow I really need to read more poetry. This was exquisite. I found it so visceral, terrifying and haunting and painful at times, but also beautiful. It’s intrinsically about healing and being human and the clarity that leaving behind addiction brings.
It’s also very clever.
It’s also very clever.
March 31, 2022
A masterful collection which I know I will return to throughout the rest of my life.
May 24, 2022
Beautiful, creative, emotive, and a really moving collection of poetry. I highly recommend this to people!
Read
April 8, 2023some really excellent stuff in here. Some of it is almost too tender. I would prefer some more syntactical edge
August 27, 2023
This book is a testament to the authors strength and talent. It takes you on a journey and is as heartbreakingly beautiful as it is powerful and eloquent. Highly recommend!
January 22, 2024
This collection is so important and so well written. I’m so grateful it exists 😭
April 27, 2024
best collection of poems I've read in a while, absolutely incredible
September 3, 2023
You only have to read the first line of the first poem of Clean to understand the world in which you are about to be immersed with this book. SPM is a master of word weaving, using language which pulls you in and captivates you in a world few have experienced. The abrasive, real, raw, peeled-back vulnerability is second to none.
The mayhem of the second chapter, the drug-induced, sleep-deprived disorientation and loss of self through addiction makes complete sense (which sounds bizarre but trust me it does) and that final chapter clean, where they pull inspiration from all the mother's, their own, Mother Nature and their no nonsense political pieces, have you tiptoeing words like it is a minefield, in the most fantastic way.
I will confess, Clean is one of those books I have owned since the day it was released and I can't tell you how many times I have read it, it finds new ways to hurt my heart and new ways to be proud of SPM for all they have endured, survived and thrived in spite of.
My favourite line from all of SPM's poems is such a relatable one 'My friend jokes, tells me to use tHEy and tHEm as my pronouns. I do not laugh: there are days when even using a capital I feels like taking up too much space'.
Read it, you won't be sorry.
The mayhem of the second chapter, the drug-induced, sleep-deprived disorientation and loss of self through addiction makes complete sense (which sounds bizarre but trust me it does) and that final chapter clean, where they pull inspiration from all the mother's, their own, Mother Nature and their no nonsense political pieces, have you tiptoeing words like it is a minefield, in the most fantastic way.
I will confess, Clean is one of those books I have owned since the day it was released and I can't tell you how many times I have read it, it finds new ways to hurt my heart and new ways to be proud of SPM for all they have endured, survived and thrived in spite of.
My favourite line from all of SPM's poems is such a relatable one 'My friend jokes, tells me to use tHEy and tHEm as my pronouns. I do not laugh: there are days when even using a capital I feels like taking up too much space'.
Read it, you won't be sorry.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews