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". This collection presents eleven contrasting but well-fitting sequences of short poems relating to women, Fishface, in which a disobedient young girl is sent to a Catholic convent school to give her mother a break; Fridge, in which trucks, geese and fridges speak of death, grief and absence; and Girls without Hamsters, 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.
Author
Selima Hill (born 13 October 1945 in Hampstead) is a British poet. Selima Hill grew up in rural England and Wales. She read Moral Sciences at New Hall, Cambridge University (1965-7). She regularly collaborates with artists and has worked on multimedia projects with the Royal Ballet, Welsh National Opera and BBC Bristol. She is a tutor at the Poetry School in London, and has taught creative writing in hospitals and prisons. Selima Hill won first prize in the 1988 Arvon Foundation/Observer International Poetry Competition for her long poem The Accumulation of Small Acts of Kindness, and her 1997 collection, Violet, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year), the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award. Her book of poetry, Bunny (2001), a series of poems about a young girl growing up in the 1950s, won the Whitbread Poetry Award. A selected poems: Gloria, was published in 2008. She was a Fellow at University of Exeter. Selima Hill lives in Lyme Regis. Her most recent book of poetry is People Who Like Meatballs (2012), shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year). (from Wikipedia)
