Selima Hill
Credit: Jill Furmanovsky
Selima Hill (she/her) grew up in a family of painters on farms in England and Wales. She has lived in Dorset for the past 40 years. She received a Cholmondeley Award in 1986 and was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Exeter University in 2003–2006.
Hill’s most recent collections from Bloodaxe Books are Men Who Feed Pigeons (2021), shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Collection, the 2021 T.S. Eliot Prize, and the 2022 Rathbones Folio Prize; Women in Comfortable Shoes (2023), a Poetry Society Book Recommendation; I May Be Stupid But I’m Not That Stupid (2019); Splash like Jesus (2017); The Magnitude of My Sublime Existence (2016), shortlisted for the 2017 Roehampton Poetry Prize; Jutland (2015), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation shortlisted for the 2015 T.S. Eliot Prize and the 2017 Roehampton Poetry Prize; The Sparkling Jewel of Naturism (2014); People Who Like Meatballs (2012), shortlisted for both a Forward Poetry Prize and a Costa Poetry Award; Fruitcake (2009); and The Hat (2008).
Hill won first prize in the 1988 Arvon Foundation/Observer International Poetry Competition with part of The Accumulation of Small Acts of Kindness (Chatto & Windus, 1989), one of several extended sequences in the retrospective volume of her work, Gloria: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2008). Gloria also includes work from Red Roses (2006), Lou-Lou (2004), Portrait of My Lover as a Horse (2002), Bunny (2001), Violet (1997), and A Little Book of Meat (1993), all from Bloodaxe Books, and My Darling Camel (Trafalgar Square, 1988), and Saying Hello at the Station (Chatto & Windus, 1984). Violet was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was shortlisted for a Forward Prize, a T.S. Eliot Prize, and a Whitbread Poetry Award. Bunny won a Whitbread Poetry Award, was a Poetry Book Society Choice, and was shortlisted for a T.S. Eliot Prize. Lou-Lou and The Hat were Poetry Book Society Recommendations.
In 2022, Hill was awarded The King’s Gold Medal for Poetry, made on the basis of her body of work, with special recognition for Gloria.