That Broke into Shining Crystals

In three sequences, Richard Scott documents what it is to have survived 'seismic assaults, the buried silences'. The first is a gallery of still-life paintings, controlled arrangements of frozen time. 'Coy' then breaks apart Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress' and repurposes its lexicon to enact the collapse of language under the strain of scalding direct statement. Finally, in the luminous title sequence, crystals and gemstones evoke fracture and fixative, demonstrating Scott's power as a poet to cast an uncompromising but ultimately uplifting light: 'For years I had no sound but his sweetness, his lye. /Thus I go slow. I song last. Least. The lower. /That which I had nor sound I may still song'.