'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, UK Poet Laureate, on behalf of The King's Gold Medal for Poetry Committee
"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, The Guardian
"In Hill’s early collections, such as Saying Hello at the Station (1984) and The Accumulation of Small Acts of Kindness (1989), the poems are considerably longer, with more of a narrative drive. It’s not that the recent work has no narrative – the poems always come in sequences – but they have the feel of comic strips rather than novels, and the unit of currency is the image…. the sequences accrue their characters and moods; the poems are part of something larger, like ornaments crowded together on a mantelpiece." - Emily Berry, London Review of Books
‘I love Selima Hill. There are several sequences in this book – that’s just one that I’ve talked about, and I've only talked about a fraction of the short poems in it - but you get so much from them. The juxtaposition of poem after poem is a fabulous experience. Her first collection came out in 1984, and she’s been very prolific, so there’s lots of Selima Hill out there - if I were you, I’d go get some!’ – Frank Skinner, Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast, on Men Who Feed Pigeons
