Hot on the heels of her previous collection Men Who Feed Pigeons, Selima Hill's Women in Comfortable Shoes is the 21st book of poetry from the UK's Emily Dickinson.

This collection presents eleven contrasting but well-fitting sequences of short poems relating to women, including: Fishface, in which a disobedient young girl is sent to a Catholic convent school to give her mother a break; Fridge, in which trucks, geese and fridges speak of death, grief and absence; and Girls without Hamsters, which deals with an older woman's obsession with a spider-legged young man.

Writing with her trademark wit and originality, Selima Hill looks closely at the complications and contradictions that define our lives and relationships.

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 with a dog; 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.

Selima Hill's poetry has been called wanton, wildly imaginative, tender, intelligent, dangerous, defiant, subversive and startling. All these qualities are strongly present throughout Gloria, a comprehensive selection drawn from ten formally diverse and thematically unified collections, each offering wild variations on her abiding themes: women's identities, love and loss, repression and abuse, family conflict and mental illness, men, animals and human civilisation. Gloria covers all Selima Hill's books from Saying Hello at the Station (1984) to Red Roses (2006), and was published at the same time as a separate, new collection, The Hat (2008).

Selima Hill was awarded the The King's Gold Medal for Poetry 2022 on the basis of her body of work, with special recognition for her retrospective Gloria: Selected Poems.

I May Be Stupid But I'm Not That Stupid brings together six contrasting but complementary poem sequences by 'this brilliant lyricist of human darkness' (Fiona Sampson) relating to family, fear, foreboding and felicity. Elective Mute is about autism and happiness; My Mother and Me on the Eve of the Chess Championships, about a mother who prefers lettuces to life; Fishtank (Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice), about a brother who is somebody else; Lambchop, about a creepy old man; The Boxer Klitschko, on finding refuge with swimming, dogs and a jovial uncle; and Helpless with Laughter, on what the parts of the body have to say about themselves. Like all of Selima Hill's work, all six sequences in the book chart 'extreme experience with a dazzling excess' (Deryn Rees-Jones), with startling humour and surprising combinations of homely and outlandish.

Splash like Jesus brings together three contrasting but complementary, familial poem sequences by 'this brilliant lyricist of human darkness' (Fiona Sampson), Buttercup the Sloth, about mothers; Lobo-Lobo, about sisters; and Behold My Father on His Bicycle, about exactly that. Like all of Selima Hill's work, all three sequences chart 'extreme experience with a dazzling excess' (Deryn Rees-Jones), with startling humour and surprising combinations of homely and outlandish.

The Magnitude of My Sublime Existence is the account of a young woman's stay in the psychiatric ward of a large hospital. The only time she feels safe is when swimming; the only place, the sea, preferably underwater. Selima Hill's 17th book of poetry - her 14th from Bloodaxe - takes her back to the territory of her third book, The Accumulation of Small Acts of Kindness (1983), but this revisiting is quite different in style and mood. Over thirty years later, 'this brilliant lyricist of human darkness' (Fiona Sampson) is more able to chart and illuminate 'extreme experience with a dazzling excess' (Deryn Rees-Jones), with startling humour and surprising combinations of homely and outlandish. Shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize.

Fruitcake brings together four poem sequences about motherhood by 'this brilliant lyricist of human darkness' (Fiona Sampson). Bougainvillae explores love and having a mother. Nylon is about happiness, and not having or being a mother. Then Bunker Sacks brings grace but also the shock of being a young mother. Finally, Grunter shows the impact of Asperger's syndrome on both mother and child. Like all of Selima Hill's books, Fruitcake charts 'extreme experience with a dazzling excess' (Deryn Rees-Jones), with startling humor and surprising combinations of homely and outlandish.

Selima Hill's The Hat is a disturbing portrayal of a woman's struggle to regain her identity. Her story emerges through a series of short poems, often related to animals: how she is preyed upon and betrayed, misunderstood, compromised and not allowed to be herself. Like all of Selima Hill's books, The Hat charts extreme experience with a dazzling excess', with dark humour and surprising combinations of homely and outlandish. The Hat was published at the same time Selima Hill's Gloria: Selected Poems, which draws on ten previous collections.

Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, Jutland brings together two contrasting poem sequences by 'this brilliant lyricist of human darkness' (Fiona Sampson), Advice on Wearing Animal Prints, winner of the Michael Marks Poetry Award, and Sunday Afternoons at the Gravel-pits. Like all of Selima Hill's work, both sequences chart 'extreme experience with a dazzling excess' (Deryn Rees-Jones), with startling humour and surprising combinations of homely and outlandish. Jutland poses questions about forgiveness, 'but the answers, / like Valentines, are never enough', as she writes in 'Wolverine': 'And can't he understand / I'm trying to love him but I don't know how? / And is it true forgiveness is forgiveness / only if the person first reprints? / That kindness isn't kindness but self-sacrifice?'

People Who Like Meatballs brings together two contrasting poem sequences about rejection by 'this brilliant lyricist of human darkness' (Fiona Sampson). The title-sequence, People Who Like Meatballs, is about a man's humiliation by a woman. Into my mother's snow-encrusted lap is about a dysfunctional mother-child relationship. Like all of Selima Hill's books, both sequences in People Who Like Meatballs chart 'extreme experience with a dazzling excess' (Deryn Rees-Jones), with startling humour and surprising combinations of homely and outlandish.

People Who Like Meatballs brings together two contrasting poem sequences about rejection by 'this brilliant lyricist of human darkness' (Fiona Sampson). The title-sequence, People Who Like Meatballs, is about a man's humiliation by a woman. Into my mother's snow-encrusted lap is about a dysfunctional mother-child relationship. Like all of Selima Hill's books, both sequences in People Who Like Meatballs chart 'extreme experience with a dazzling excess' (Deryn Rees-Jones), with startling humour and surprising combinations of homely and outlandish.

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