Overview

Men 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. The 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.

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9781780375861

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Reviews

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 * Guardian * Selima Hill's Jutland has an astounding vivacity. Hill is a complete original whose body of work is unique in British poetry and this volume is an example of her at her best. Jutland consists of two extended sequences: Advice on Wearing Animal Prints, a kaleidoscope of shifting perspectives presenting the character Agatha, and Sunday Afternoons at the Gravel-pits, portraying a little girl and her father. Each poem tells an uncomfortable truth, through fireworks of surreal images. Every image is a surprise, sometimes funny, usually shocking, but at the same time archetypal as a brand new fairy-tale, and all this is achieved with crystalline brevity. -- Pascale Petit * chair of the 2015 T.S. Eliot Prize judges * Her adoption of surrealist techniques of shock, bizarre, juxtaposition and defamiliarisation work to subvert conventional notions of self and the feminine… Hill returns repeatedly to fragmented narratives, charting extreme experience with a dazzling excess, -- Deryn Rees-Jones * Modern Women Poets *

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 * Guardian * Selima Hill's Jutland has an astounding vivacity. Hill is a complete original whose body of work is unique in British poetry and this volume is an example of her at her best. Jutland consists of two extended sequences: Advice on Wearing Animal Prints, a kaleidoscope of shifting perspectives presenting the character Agatha, and Sunday Afternoons at the Gravel-pits, portraying a little girl and her father. Each poem tells an uncomfortable truth, through fireworks of surreal images. Every image is a surprise, sometimes funny, usually shocking, but at the same time archetypal as a brand new fairy-tale, and all this is achieved with crystalline brevity. -- Pascale Petit * chair of the 2015 T.S. Eliot Prize judges * Her adoption of surrealist techniques of shock, bizarre, juxtaposition and defamiliarisation work to subvert conventional notions of self and the feminine... Hill returns repeatedly to fragmented narratives, charting extreme experience with a dazzling excess, -- Deryn Rees-Jones * Modern Women Poets *

Author Information

Selima Hill were Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Her most recent collections from Bloodaxe areThe 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;Splash like Jesus(2017);I May Be Stupid But I'm Not That Stupid(2019); andMen Who Feed Pigeons(2021), shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Collection, the 2021 T.S. Eliot Prize, and the Rathbones Folio Prize 2022. Her 21st book of poetry,Women in Comfortable Shoes, is published by Bloodaxe in June 2023. Selima Hill has been named winner of The King's Gold Medal for Poetry, 2022. The award is being made on the basis of her body of work, with special recognition for her 2008 Bloodaxe Books retrospectiveGloria: Selected Poems.

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