The King's Gold Medal for Poetry, 2022
Like the 23rd Psalm, Selima Hill’s 23rd book of poetry witnesses a journey through the valley of the shadow of death, but with no comforting afterlife, only stubborn, perplexed survival. The book chronicles the intensely painful passing of days over the course of a year overwhelmed by impending loss before inevitable unbelievable death, endless numbing grief, baffled bereavement and uncomprehending widowhood. And yet…
There are eight sequences of short poems, prose poems and short pieces:
The Invalid and the Giraffe: Being ill and being nursed.
The Butcher: Visiting the hospice.
Eat as Much Chocolate as You Want: Further thoughts of a hospice visitor.
Laziness: Reports from the hospice and a visit to the hospital.
Beefy: A widow prepares for the funeral.
The Lily Pond: Bereavement and the funeral.
The Lorry: Six months after the funeral.
Kick My Duck: Widowhood and being a widow.
'The miniaturism of Martial and Emily Dickinson is reinvented in this iridescent collection which brings together 11 sequences whose subjects range from girls misbehaving in convent schools to fridges contemplating death, plus a pair of bad-tempered sisters, a parrot and hair clips... Over 254 pages, Hill creates a new kind of narrative poem, which has all the rewards of reading a good novel – or novels – yet she retains poetry’s unique ability to zoom in on minutiae, as when contemplating ants whizzing about like bumper cars...' – Philip Terry, The Guardian (The best recent poetry) on Women in Comfortable Shoes
'Selima Hill is an inimitable talent. The mind is fragile and unreliable in her poetry, but is also tenacious and surprising, capable of the most extraordinary responses, always fighting back with language as its survival kit. Life in general might be said to be her subject, the complications, contradictions and consequences of simply existing. Nevertheless, Hill’s writing is eminently readable and approachable, even fun at times, the voice of a person and a poet who will not be quieted and will not conform to expectations, especially poetic ones.' – Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate, on behalf of The King's Gold Medal for Poetry Committee 2022
‘… by turns surreal, witty and touching is Selima Hill's tomely A Man, a Woman & a Hippopotamus, which, at 270 pages, has the feel of a Collected, but in Hill's trademark refusal of convention, it is a book full of kaleidoscopic miniatures. Three poems often share one page where voices of animals, objects and shared lives intertwine: there is enormous fun in Hill's writing […] in their brevity these poems possess an oddly snowballing effect, where narratives fuse with one another. […] This book marks Hill as a poet of boundless reinvention.' – Mícheál McCann, The Irish Times
'Selima Hill's A Man, a Woman & a Hippopotamus is wickedly funny and strange in the best way. This collection is as sharp as it is understated, transforming everyday life into a cartography of intimacy and fracture. Domestic detail collides with surreal images that feel truer than realism. Her poems expose family rifts, faith and gendered power dynamics with biting wit in deceptively simple snapshots. The book is bold, relatable and unforgettable: a sly masterpiece of the ordinary made uncanny.' – Anzal Omar, Poetry Book Society Bulletin
‘A Man, a Woman & a Hippopotamus is divided into ten sections. Each section, or sequence, reads like a short story, a long short story, often in very short poems of just two or three lines. The book is witty, acerbic, sad, tender, philosophical, beautifully observed, and is another groundbreaking work by an important poet at the top of her game, always pushing the envelope of possibility.’ – The Scotsman Magazine (Poem of the Week)
‘Her poems resist analysis. Short, precise and startling, funny in both senses, they make everything else look like pretentious waffle… Hill is especially good at capturing young girls’ voices, a strength of the early sequences here, in a book that charts a kind of Seven Ages of Woman … Selima Hill is a great poet.’ – Tristram Fane Saunders, The Telegraph (Poetry Book of the Month), on Women in Comfortable Shoes
‘This is the twenty-first poetry collection from the unstoppable Selima Hill. These days she tends to present her work as sequences of small poems, some extremely minimal. Women in Comfortable Shoes consists of eleven such sequences. Their power lies not so much in the individual poems as in the cumulative, immersive effect of each sequence, and in Hill’s charismatic voice which seizes attention from the get-go … I seem to see the world more vividly and sense it more intensely after reading Selima Hill, and this highly readable collection is no exception. She shakes things up and wakes up your mind like no other poet. She’d probably hate to hear me saying this but – genius!’ – Annie Fisher, The Friday Poem
‘Hill’s writing has always been characterised by her original approach to the image. Her images are always three dimensional, like sculptures. We don’t just see them, we feel them, too [...] Hill’s most recent book, Women in Comfortable Shoes, comprises eleven sequences—atypical of the shape of much of her work, which is often made up of many short poems grouped together to form a kind of fragmented narrative [...] These fictionalized narrative frameworks seem to allow Hill the distance to avoid exposure of the self, while also giving her the freedom to explore aspects of the female experience.’ – Kim Moore, Poetry Magazine
Selima Hill: A Man, a Woman & a Hippopotamus
Selima Hill speaks to Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley on the phone and reads poems from A Man, a Woman and a Hippopotamus. This film was included in Bloodaxe's online book launch event for October 2025 titles.
Selima Hill: Women in Comfortable Shoes
Selima Hill reads a selection of short poems from eight of the eleven sequences in Women in Comfortable Shoes : ‘Fishface’, ‘My Friend Weasel’, ‘Susan and Me’, ‘Dolly’, ‘My Mother with a Beetle in Her Hair’, ‘Fridge’, ‘The Chauffeur’ and ‘Dressed and Sobbing’. Neil Astley filmed her reading in the octagonal Garden Tower in Dorset in May 2023.
Octagonal Readings: Selima Hill reads from eight of her books
Selima Hill reads a selection of short poems from eight of the collections she has published between Gloria: Selected Poems (2008) and Women in Comfortable Shoes (2023): Fruitcake (2007), People Who Like Meatballs (2012), The Sparkling Jewel of Naturism (2014), Jutland (2015), The Magnitude of My Sublime Existence (2016), Splash Like Jesus (2017), I May Be Stupid But I’m Not That Stupid (2019) and Men Who Feed Pigeons (2019). Neil Astley filmed her reading in the octagonal Garden Tower in Dorset in May 2023.
Selima Hill: Men Who Feed Pigeons
Selima Hill talks to Emily Berry about Men Who Feed Pigeons and reads a selection of poems from the book first published in The Poetry Review: 'Standing on His Doorstep', 'The Beautiful Man Whose Name I Can't Pronounce', 'A Happy-looking Man', 'Jelly', 'Bucket', 'What Kind of Woman Am I', 'Chickens', 'You Either Love a Person or You Don't', 'My Horse-hoof Soup', 'Berries' and 'The Tank'. The interview was recorded by Emily Berry for The Poetry Society podcast in 2021. This film was edited by Neil Astley and Peter Hebden and included in Bloodaxe's online book launch event shared with Hannah Lowe and Stephanie Norgate on 16 September 2021.
Selima Hill reads seven poems from Gloria
Selima Hill reads seven poems from Gloria: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2008): ‘Cow’, ‘Don’t Let’s Talk About Being in Love’, ‘Desire’s a Desire’, ‘Being a Wife’, ‘Why I Left You’, ‘The World’s Entire Wasp Population’ and ‘PRAWNS DE JO’. Pamela Robertson-Pearce filmed Selima Hill in London on 2 November 2007. This film is from the DVD-anthology In Person: 30 Poets, filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce & edited by Neil Astley (Bloodaxe Books, 2008).
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