Selima Hill
The Canteen
I never went near the stupid place. I lived on dates like George Bernard Shaw. They found me on the bathroom floor, apparently, beside a large salmon-pink hot-water-bottle, although by then it was the height of summer.
The Cockroach
When he woke up one morning under the old sandwich-toaster, he found himself transformed into a man, a tiny man with a pink belly.
The Enormous Dining-Room
He dines alone in his enormous dining-room, complete with chandeliers and a hatch. As time goes by, he eats less and less. His housekeeper is now reduced to sending him simple soups and small transparent jellies. And when she finds him dead she’s not surprised.
The Enviable Woodlouse
Because the woodlouse on the larder floor is not forever thinking to herself she does not get the point of being a woodlouse, the person with the cauliflower envies her.
The Thing He Struggles With
I think the thing he struggles with is love. By ‘love’ I don’t mean sex, I mean love. Or, if not love, at least some small pastries.
Selima Hill is a poet living in Dorset. In 2022, she won the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry. Her collection Men Who Feed Pigeons (2021) was shortlisted for the 2021 T.S.Eliot Prize, the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Collection, and the 2022 Rathbones Folio Prize. Her 22nd book of poetry, A Man, a Woman & a Hippopotamus, is published by Bloodaxe Books in 2025.
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