A Man, a Woman & a Hippopotamus

Selima Hill's twenty-second collection A Man, a Woman & a Hippopotamus. presents ten sequences of short poems, prose poems and short pieces on relationships and doings between people, animals and the world at large. Self-portrait with a Bucket: On being an artist's model. The Mathematician. : A man and woman trying to agree. A Man, a Woman & a Chihuahua. : Different people's senses of bafflement with each other. Baby Peter. : A homeless man and his mother. Agatha. : An afternoon in a care home. Room 17. : A 70-year-old woman, baffled but determined. Men in Shorts and Bonkers. : Out walking with dogs and their humans. Until the Tears Roll Down My Cheeks like Honey. : Two strangers in a field. The Surly Mothers of Successful Men. : Short pieces of memoir. '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, Poet Laureate, on behalf of The King's Gold Medal for Poetry Committee 2022.