Limbic

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.

About the Author :
Peter Scalpello is a queer poet and sexual health therapist from Glasgow. His poems have been published in Penguin's literary magazine Five Dials, Parspar Press's Scintillas: New Maltese Writing, Pilot Press's A Queer Anthology of Healing and A Queer Anthology of Wilderness, Gutter Magazine, Impossible Archetype, Anthropocene, Fruit Journal, The Selkie, and Queerlings, among others. In 2021 he was nominated for a Forward Prize and Pushcart Prize. In 2020, he was shortlisted for the Creative Future Writers' Award, and longlisted for the Desperate Literature Prize, and the University of East Anglia 'Show Me Yours Prize'. He has performed his poems at events alongside Danez Smith and Andrew McMillan, and has read at Fringe: Queer Film & Arts Festival 2020, Granta's Feminist Erotica readings, Homotopia Festival 2020, and University of Glasgow's Stay at Home Fringe 2020. His pamphlets Acting Out and chem & other poems were published by Broken Sleep Books in 2021. Limbic is his first collection.

Review :
“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;“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; “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; “All the superlatives for Peter Scalpello’s tender poems. I can’t stop thinking about them.” – Niven Govinden; "Peter Scalpello’s Limbic is an extraordinary book. At times riotous and celebratory as he explores queer desire in a complex and nuanced way; at other times introspective and even erased as Scalpello examines the impact of substance use on the self and on sexuality; and at other times bristling with poetic rage and protest! ‘Wounds need air’ he writes, finding a language, both noisy and translucent, to transform these wounds into poems – poems which ultimately transform and transcend themselves, as the poet even becomes his ‘own daddy’!" - Richard Scott