Like by Héloïse de Satgé is a sharp, funny, and unguarded pamphlet that runs the characters and misadventures of Peep Show through the textures of a young life in contemporary London. Jez is recast as an OnlyFans creator and a bisexual icon, Dobby shrinks a possessive man to a figurine in a dollhouse flat, and the show's dead dog is written back to life, while around these revisions gather student nights, balcony vapes, cheating exes, situationships, and a teenage festival of baptisms and abstinence. Throughout, de Satgé keeps a clear-eyed attention on money, desire, and small humiliations, before the book settles into the calm of a summer evening.
 
PRAISE for Like:
I fully endorse the extraordinary collaboration between Peep Show and the excellent brain which has produced these glittering shards of poetry.
   — Jesse Armstrong
 
A captivating, dangerous, perfectly poised collection. de Satgé’s poetry is as funny and jaw-droppingly honest as Peep Show, the sequence’s ekphrastic relative. But what animates the work is the moment comedy – a totalising system of meaning if ever there was one – falls away like a curtain to reveal the vulnerability, fear and melancholy that makes all of us who we are, just as much as the laughter; no more and no less.
   — Luke Kennard
 
Like is everything you want in a pamphlet - blissfully deadpan, irresistible as a dancefloor banger, spiky enough to leave bloodstains on the carpet. Héloïse de Satgé’s laugh-out-loud satirical genius puts Mitchell and Webb to shame, but this is no simple spoof. Rather, an exquisite rorschach - painted in offal and vape fluid - of living in ‘a girl shape’ through late-stage capitalist London, of flourishing sexuality repackaged for the neoliberal gaze, exhaustion rebranded as adventure. These poems bring the reader face to face with the homoerotic playfight between rebellion and anxiety that lives within us all, or at least those of us not yet fully automated.
   — Amy Acre
 
A queasy, visceral exploration of being young, bold and full of longing in the big city. Formally inventive, accomplished and immersive, these high wire poems crackle and hum with love and fury. An electric, explosive read.
   — Jacqueline Saphra
 
Using the beloved sitcom Peep Show as her framing device, Héloïse de Satgé’s pamphlet takes a cool but caring eye at the peaks and troughs of love over a long, hot summer. On the streets, in the pubs and parks, this is how it feels, to be young, open to the world, and wanting more right now. This is writing with a tough yet tender sensibility, vulnerable and funny to boot. All the good stuff basically. You might not trust people, but you can trust these poems.
   — Rishi Dastidar
 
These are poems you’d want to be mates with. Full of all the brilliant power of being a woman, they span the strange, funny, messy and awkwardness in the scenarios we find ourselves in with joy, grief, romance and chaos in the side car. Héloïse writes with no apology with such a punch and vulnerability at the same time finding poetry in cold beers, pals, poetry nights, endless London travel, travel, haircuts, bad days, good days and the soft landings we find amongst it all. These poems are fizzing with energy and huge heart. They make the everyday feel strange and beautiful, leave you feeling fuller and closer to yourself reminding us that there is poetry everywhere if you know where to look. This book is like a teddy bear holding a love heart. I fancy these poems.
   — Laurie Bolger
 
Like is adventurous, intelligent, sensual, and full of aesthetic pleasure: like a hot summer day in the streets of London, where anything could happen, and much of it does. It is often funny, sometimes sad, and always prescient; in its close observations, it blazes a brightly lit path through the insecurities, confusions, fears and joys of contemporary life.
   — Christine Lehnen
 
ABOUT Héloïse de Satgé:
Héloïse de Satgé is a London based poet. She completed both her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the University of Birmingham. She runs a monthly poetry night, ‘Everything’, and her debut pamphlet, Rein It In, came out in May 2024.