Men Who Feed Pigeons Synopsis
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. Shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Collection.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781780375861 |
| Publication date: |
16th September 2021 |
| Author: |
Selima Hill |
| Publisher: |
Bloodaxe Books Ltd |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
157 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Poetry
|
| Other Genres: |
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Selima Hill Press 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
About Selima Hill
Selima Hill grew up in a family of painters in farms in England and Wales, and has lived in Dorset for the past 25 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) and People Who Like Meatballs (2012).
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