Born in Hampstead in 1945 into a family of painters, Selima Hill now lives on the Dorset coast. A prodigiously prolific poet, her first collection, Saying Hello at the Station, was published in 1984 and she has since produced over twenty collections (including two Selected Poems), most published by Bloodaxe Books. Her 1997 collection, Violet, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award. Bunny (2001), a series of poems about a young girl growing up in the 1950s, won the Whitbread Poetry Award, was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Jutland (2015) was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Men Who Feed Pigeons (2021) was shortlisted for both the Forward and T. S. Eliot Prizes. She has since published titles including Women in Comfortable Shoes (2023), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and A Man, a Woman & a Hippopotamus (2025). Selima was awarded the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2022. Author photo © Jill Furmanovsky
Shortlisted Works
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