Limbic by Peter Scalpello

Limbic is Peter Scalpello's glittering ode to sex, intimacy, and queer discovery. Taking us on slippery nights out fuelled by chemsex, on drunken lads' holidays, and into the quiet violence of small domestic moments, this is a world where tracksuits hide queer desire, where shame masks vulnerability, where wallets hide wraps of crystal meth. From the eager trepidation of teenage sex, to the ecstasy of parties, to the stigma around HIV, Limbic is at once a therapy and a celebration, showing how queer learning can be both soft-edged and brutal at once.

An exploration of masculinity, addiction and trauma, this is a revelatory collection of poems; wise, tender, and vital.
 
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"Limbic is a stunning first collection from a breathtaking poet. Visceral, elegant and uncompromising; an important addition to the queer canon.  Buy it a drink and let it talk to you late into the night." Joelle Taylor
"At once playful and devastating, raw and complex. These poems tear open the relationship between masculinity and sex, queerness, compulsions, addictions... It would be difficult not to be moved by this collection." Keith Jarrett
"A moving collection which, through different forms, different narratives, and different encounters, speaks eloquently and dynamically to the multiplicities our own bodies contain." Andrew McMillan
 
Peter Scalpello is a queer poet and sexual health therapist from Glasgow. His poems have been published in Penguin's literary magazine Five Dials, Pilot Press's A Queer Anthology of Healing and A Queer Anthology of Wilderness, Gutter Magazine, Impossible Archetype among others. In 2021 he was nominated for a Forward Prize and Pushcart Prize.   His pamphlets Acting Out and chem & other poems were published by Broken Sleep Books in 2021. Limbic is his first collection.