First edition, advance proof copy laid in proof dust jacket. Author's first book. Fine. 48 pages. decorated stiff paper wrappers.. 12mo..

SAYING HELLO AT STATN

Literature & Fiction

HILL, Selima

History & Criticism

Chatto & Windus/Hogarth Press

Brings together two contrasting poem sequences by ""this brilliant lyricist of human darkness"" (Fiona Sampson), `Advice on Wearing Animal Prints,' winner of the Michael Marks Poetry Award, and `Sunday Afternoons at the Gravel-pits.' Like all of Selima Hill's work, both sequences chart ""extreme experience with a dazzling excess"" (Deryn Rees-Jones), with startling humor and surprising combinations of homely and outlandish.

Jutland

Poetry

Bloodaxe Books

I May Be Stupid But I'm Not That Stupid brings together six contrasting but complementary poem sequences by 'this brilliant lyricist of human darkness' (Fiona Sampson) relating to family, fear, foreboding and felicity. Elective Mute is about autism and happiness; My Mother and Me on the Eve of the Chess Championships, about a mother who prefers lettuces to life; Fishtank (Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice), about a brother who is somebody else; Lambchop, about a creepy old man; The Boxer Klitschko, on finding refuge with swimming, dogs and a jovial uncle; and Helpless with Laughter, on what the parts of the body have to say about themselves. Like all of Selima Hill's work, all six sequences in the book chart 'extreme experience with a dazzling excess' (Deryn Rees-Jones), with startling humour and surprising combinations of homely and outlandish..

I May Be Stupid But I'm Not That Stupid

The poetic account of a young woman's stay in the psychiatric ward of a large hospital. The only time she feels safe is when swimming; the only place, the sea, preferably underwater. Selima Hill's 17th book of poetry - her 14th from Bloodaxe - takes her back to the territory of her third book, The Accumulation of Small Acts of Kindness (1983), but this revisiting is quite different in style and mood. Over thirty years later, Hill is more able to chart and illuminate with startling humor and surprising combinations of homely and outlandish.

The Magnitude of My Sublime Existence

A collection from award-winning British poet, Selima Hill. With three contrasting but complementary, familial poem sequences: `Buttercup the Sloth', about mothers; `Lobo-Lobo', about sisters; and `Behold My Father on His Bicycle', about exactly that.

Splash Like Jesus

Review\n'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, UK Poet Laureate, on behalf of The King's Gold Medal for Poetry Committee\n"Arguably the most distinctive truth teller to emerge in British poetry…Despite her thematic preoccupations, there’s nothing conscientious or worthy about Hill’s work. She is a flamboyant, exuberant writer who seems effortlessly to juggle her outrageous symbolic lexicon…using techniques of juxtaposition, interruption and symbolism to articulate narratives of the unconscious. Those narratives are the matter of universal, and universally recognisable, psychodrama…hers is a poetry of piercing emotional apprehension, lightly worn… So original that it has sometimes scared off critical scrutineers, her work must now, surely, be acknowledged as being of central importance in British poetry – not only for the courage of its subject matter but also for the lucid compression of its poetics." - Fiona Sampson, The Guardian\n"In Hill’s early collections, such as Saying Hello at the Station (1984) and The Accumulation of Small Acts of Kindness (1989), the poems are considerably longer, with more of a narrative drive. It’s not that the recent work has no narrative – the poems always come in sequences – but they have the feel of comic strips rather than novels, and the unit of currency is the image…. the sequences accrue their characters and moods; the poems are part of something larger, like ornaments crowded together on a mantelpiece." - Emily Berry, London Review of Books\nMen Who Feed Pigeons brings together seven contrasting but complementary poem sequences by ‘this brilliant lyricist of human darkness’ (Fiona Sampson) relating to men and different kinds of women’s relationships with men.\nThe Anaesthetist is about men at work; The Beautiful Man with the Unpronounceable Name is about someone else’s husband; Billy relates to friendship between a man and a woman; Biro is about living next door to a mysterious uncle; The Man in the Quilted Dressing-gown portrays a very particular old man; Ornamental Lakes as Seen from Trains is about a woman and a man she’s afraid of; while Shoebill is another sequence about a woman and a man, but quite different from the others. Like all of Selima Hill’s work, all seven sequences in this book chart ‘extreme experience with a dazzling excess’ (Deryn Rees-Jones), with startling humour and surprising combinations of homely and outlandish.

Men Who Feed Pigeons

Hot on the heels of her previous collection Men Who Feed Pigeons, Selima Hill's Women in Comfortable Shoes is the 21st book of poetry from "the UK's Emily Dickinson".&nbsp; This collection presents eleven contrasting but well-fitting sequences of short poems relating to women, including:&nbsp;Fishface, in&nbsp;which a&nbsp;disobedient young girl is sent to a Catholic convent school to give her mother a break;&nbsp;Fridge,&nbsp;in which trucks, geese and fridges speak of death, grief and absence; and&nbsp;Girls without Hamsters,&nbsp;which deals with an older woman's obsession with a spider-legged young man. Writing with her trademark wit and originality, Selima Hill looks closely at the complications and contradictions that define our lives and relationships.&nbsp;

Women in Comfortable Shoes

The poems in A Little Book of Meat are written in the voice of a woman growing up on a remote cattle farm with her mother, a devout Catholic, and her much-loved assortment of animals. She is already nearly 30, knows little of the outside world, and walks with a slight limp. One day a stranger calls, a travelling slaughterman... Where Selima Hill's last book, The Accumulation of Small Acts of Kindness, was the record of a nervous breakdown, A Little Book of Meat tells the story of a love affair, combining the tenderness and subversive humour of her most startling poetry with the imaginative depth and unpredictability of an untamed novel.

Little Book of Meat

Bloodaxe Books Ltd.

Selima Hill grew up in a family of painters in farms in England and Wales, and has lived in Dorset for the past 35 years. She received a Cholmondeley Award in 1986, and was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Exeter University in 2003-06. She won first prize in the Arvon International Poetry Competition with part of The Accumulation of Small Acts of Kindness (1989), one of several extended sequences in Gloria: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2008), which also includes work from Saying Hello at the Station (1984), My Darling Camel (1988), A Little Book of Meat (1993), Aeroplanes of the World (1994), Violet (1997), Bunny (2001), Portrait of My Lover as a Horse (2002), Lou-Lou (2004) and Red Roses (2006). Violet was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was shortlisted for all three of the UK's major poetry prizes, the Forward Prize, T.S. Eliot Prize and Whitbread Poetry Award. Bunny won the Whitbread Poetry Award, was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was also shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Lou-Lou and The Hat were Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Her most recent collections from Bloodaxe are The Hat (2008); Fruitcake (2009); People Who Like Meatballs (2012), shortlisted for both the Forward Poetry Prize and the Costa Poetry Award; The Sparkling Jewel of Naturism (2014); Jutland (2015), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation which was shortlisted for the 2015 T.S. Eliot Prize and was earlier shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize; The Magnitude of My Sublime Existence (2016), shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize 2017; and Splash like Jesus (2017). Her 19th collection, I May Be Stupid But I'm Not That Stupid, was published by Bloodaxe in 2019.

Trembling Hearts in the Bodies of Dogs: New & Selected Poems

Very good. Shipped from the U.K. All orders received before 3pm sent that weekday.

Violet

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by HILL, Selima. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by HILL, Selima