Violet by Selima Hill
Violet is full of double trouble: startlingly wild, often bizarre poems on sisters and husbands, sex, ducks and fridges. If Selima Hill seems to show as strange a portrait of family life as anything by Buñuel or Almodovar, that is because her mirror reflects more than just surfaces. Hers is a looking-glass world seen through a fairground mirror, which exaggerates and accuses as well as telling a few home truths. Both distorting and revealing, Violet explodes lies and tells them too; exposes myths and creates them. In the end, nothing is certain, except that there are giant cows paddling in the stream, sloths singing in the trees, ants herding ferocious sheep, and ailing fish in the fish hospital. When the mirror cracks, with pain or laughter, the book splits into two halves. My Sister’s Sister is the story of two sisters, from the early days of their childhood to their final estrangement after the death of their mother. My Husband’s Wife is a woman whose love for her husband survives the painful breakdown of their marriage. 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.
Selima Hill grew up in a family of painters in farms in England and Wales, and has lived in Dorset for the past 35 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); People Who Like Meatballs (2012), shortlisted for both the Forward Poetry Prize and the Costa Poetry Award; The Sparkling Jewel of Naturism (2014); Jutland (2015), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation which was shortlisted for the 2015 T.S. Eliot Prize and was earlier shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize; The Magnitude of My Sublime Existence (2016), shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize 2017; and Splash like Jesus (2017). Her 19th collection, I May Be Stupid But I'm Not That Stupid, was published by Bloodaxe in 2019.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781852244002 |
| ISBN 10 | 1852244003 |
| Title | Violet |
| Author | Selima Hill |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Bloodaxe Books Ltd |
| Year published | 1997-04-24 |
| Number of pages | 80 |
| Prizes | Short-listed for T S Eliot Prize 1997, Short-listed for Forward Poetry Prize: Best Collection 1997, Short-listed for Whitbread Book Awards: Poetry Category 1997 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |