Table of Contents

Elective Mute
19 The Fire
19 Thousands upon Thousands of Beetles
19 Elastic
20 The Bear
20 It Seems a Shame to Scream as Loud as Possible
20 I’m Sorry But I Think I Might Be Real
21 Summer Days
21 There’s More to Life than Swimming
21 Death and the Smell of Almonds
22 Coconut
22 Dumb
23 The Wedding-cake
23 PLEASE CARRY DOGS
23 Cows in Dreams
24 Rubber Bands
24 DEPTH CHANGE
24 Them
25 My Mother
25 My Head
25 Chatty
26 Made Entirely of Roses
26 Tiddlywinks
26 My Darling Spiders
27 Football
27 My First Boyfriend
27 If It Gets Too Noisy
28 My Wettened Balaclava
28 My Second Boyfriend
28 Blue Murder
29 Rubies
29 Snouts
29 Comfort
30 Sweetcorn
30 Cocoa
30 Fear
31 The Catastrophic Driving Lesson
31 Watches
31 Other People
32 Rubber Cow
32 Purple Eel-grass
32 To Disentangle Wool
33 Happiness
33 How To Smile
33 Telephone Numbers
34 Convivial
34 The Slowness of the Slow
34 Electricity
35 You and Me
35 Coffee?
35 Queen
36 Conversation in a Sheep Field
36 Having Fun
36 Seventeen Sheep
37 Children and Adults
37 Rothko and Mints
37 My Third Boyfriend’s Sunbed
38 Tickles
38 Praise and Dust
38 Arson
39 OK, OK, OK
39 Aphid
39 Hazelnuts
40 The Woman in the Changing-room and Me
40 She Follows Me Around and Upsets Me
40 In Love with Roger Federer
41 Swallow
41 Black and White Buttons
41 Why I Like Fish
42 People Who Wear Bobble-hats
42 The Huggers
42 Camping
43 Grab a Wrap
43 Simple Dunes
43 Skin
44 Havoc and Graciousness
44 Kangaroo
44 How to Sparkle
45 A Bird on a Cow
45 Empathy, Empathy, Empathy
45 Potato
46 Octopuses
46 A Person with a Saw and Some Chocolate

My Mother and Me on the Eve of the Chess Championships
49 My Mother’s Underwear
49 My Mother on a Rock with a Sketchbook
49 The Precious Moments of My Mother’s Life
50 My Mother’s Handkerchiefs
50 My Mother’s Jeans
50 My Mother’s Powder
51 My Mother in the Shoe Shop
51 My Mother in Her Nightdress
51 My Mother in the Drawing-room
52 My Mother in August
52 My Mother’s Petticoat
52 My Mother in the Studio
53 My Mother’s Omelettes
53 My Mother and Me in the Library
53 My Mother in a Swimsuit
54 My Mother’s Husband
54 My Mother’s New Clogs
54 My Mother on a Mountain-top
55 My Mother on Holiday
55 My Mother’s Mother
55 My Mother Keeps Bees
56 My Mother’s Hat
56 My Mother’s Hair
56 My Mother and the Great Dane
57 My Mother with Flour on Her Hands
57 My Mother and the Snails
57 My Mother’s Book
58 My Mother’s Shoes
58 My Mother’s Washing
58 My Mother at the Tennis Courts
59 My Mother Like a Bird
59 My Mother at the House in Gortahork
59 My Mother Plays Strip-Jack-Naked
60 My Mother in Hangzhou
60 My Mother and Small Children
61 My Mother and Australia
61 My Mother, Normally Such a Sweet Person
62 My Mother in the Kitchen
62 My Mother’s Mortal Panic
62 My Mother by the Side of the Road
63 My Mother’s Ankles
63 My Mother’s Sponge
63 This Is How I Write About My Mother
64 My Mother and the Oceans
64 My Mother’s Car
65 My Mother’s Purse
65 My Mother and Flamingos
66 My Mother’s Silverware
66 My Mother Plays Charades
66 My Mother among the Butterflies
67 My Mother and the Sound of Chartreuse
67 My Mother in the Car Park
68 My Mother’s Gloominess
68 My Mother and the Rabbit
69 My Mother like a Dress Made of Pins
69 My Mother at the Open-air Swimming-pool
70 My Mother and the History of Art
70 My Mother’s Mattress
71 My Mother and the Sea
71 My Mother and Me on the Eve of the Chess Championships
71 Water for My Mother
72 My Mother and Men
72 My Mother’s Elegance
73 My Mother’s Doctor
73 My Mother at Night
74 My Mother in the Bath
74 My Mother in Heaven

Fishtank
77 My Brother and the Chocolates
77 My Brother’s Pipe
77 My Brother at Night
78 My Brother’s Shoulders
78 My Brother’s Fish
78 My Brother and Santa Claus
79 My Brother’s Party
79 My Brother’s Shoes
79 My Brother’s Tie
80 My Brother’s Hands
80 My Brother in Tennis Shorts
80 My Brother as a Maybug
81 My Brother’s Patients
81 My Brother’s Papers
81 My Brother’s Mother
82 My Brother’s Bacon
82 My Brother’s Door
82 My Brother’s Voice
83 My Brother’s Eggs
83 My Brother’s Jolly Side
83 My Brother’s Questions
84 My Brother on the Lawn
84 My Brother’s Flute
84 My Brother’s Chair
85 My Brother on My Wedding Day
85 My Brother’s Eyes
85 My Brother’s Nose
86 My Brother’s Spectacles
86 My Brother’s Heart
86 At Home with My Brother

Lambchop
89 An Elderly Silver-haired Gentleman
89 The Tulips
89 The Tennis Players
90 The Chandelier
90 The Swan
90 The Walking-stick
91 The Taxi
91 The Telephone
91 The Man Next Door
92 The Pigeons
92 The Forest
92 Girls
93 The Window
93 The Perfume of His Fabulous Pomade
93 The Jack Russell Terrier
94 The Doctors
94 The Fly
94 Cutlery
95 The Bandages
95 The Kitten
95 The Hornet
96 The Restaurant
96 The Nurse
96 The Patient
97 The Lily
97 Because He Never Sleeps
97 His Hairy Ears
98 The Lamb
98 The Pear
98 Visitors
99 The Bucket
99 The River
99 The Cow
100 Suddenly One Morning
100 The Tall House

The Boxer Klitschko
103 The Little Pond
103 The Picnic
103 My Cow and Fish Dream
104 The House-mistress’s Chow
104 The Elephant House
104 My Grandfather’s Biscuit
105 When My Diamond-studded Sisters Scream
105 My Hamster, Concrete
105 Jelly Beans
106 What I Saw in the Changing-Rooms
106 Why They Wear Bikinis
106 The Waterfall
107 On Holiday with My Mother and Two Sisters
107 The Regulars
107 Goose
108 What My Mother Says and What She Does
108 The Weekend at the Lake
108 Stranger
109 Underwater
109 The Egg
109 Matron
110 The Pool in Winter
110 Selflessly Making Me Hot Meals
111 My Mother’s Ironing-board
111 The Man I Didn’t Know
111 Eating Cake outside Europe’s Biggest Swimming-pool
112 Girls Who Disobey
112 Meeting My Uncle for the First Time
112 My Uncle’s Blanket
113 Breakfast at My Uncle’s
113 Everywhere You Go There Is Sea
114 A Love of Horses
114 Magnetism
114 My Uncle in the Shower
115 My Uncle’s Kippers
115 My Uncle’s Bread-slicer
115 My Uncle’s Morris Traveller
116 My Uncle’s Boathouse
116 My Uncle’s Newfoundlands
116 The Mermaid
117 My Uncle’s Sunroom
117 My Uncle Sandwiches
117 The Relationships Between Numbers
118 Heaven
119 Shoes
119 The Shop
119 The Smallest of the Aunts
120 Walking to the Boathouse
120 The Tiny Sunhat
121 If I Want to Be a Hippopotamus
121 The Yacht
122 Take the Little Boat
122 What My Mother Wanted

Helpless with Laughter
125 Ankles
125 Arm
126 Armpits
126 Belly
126 Biceps
127 Body
127 Body Parts
128 Blood
128 Bone
129 Bottoms
129 Brain
129 Breastbone
130 Breasts
130 Calves
130 Cheeks
131 Chin
131 Collarbone
132 Crotch
132 Cuticles
132 Ears
133 Elbows
133 Eye
133 Eyelashes
134 Eyelids
134 Face
134 Feet
135 Finger
135 Fingernails
135 Fringe
136 Groin
136 Hair
136 Hands
137 Head
137 Hearts
137 Heels
138 Hymen
138 Iris
138 Jaw
139 Kidney
139 Knees
139 Lanugo
140 Lips
140 Lungs
140 Muscles
141 Navel
141 Neck
141 Nerves
142 Nipples
142 Nose
142 Nostrils
143 Penis
143 Ribcage
143 Saliva
144 Shoulder-blades
144 Shin
144 Skull
145 Soul
145 Spine
146 Teeth
146 Thighs
146 Throat
147 Thumbs
147 Toes
147 Tongue
148 Veins
148 Vocal Cords
148 Womb
149 Wrists
149 Wristbone

About the Author

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.

Reviews

Selima Hill's Jutland has an astounding vivacity. Hill is a complete original whose body of work is unique in British poetry and this volume is an example of her at her best. Jutland consists of two extended sequences: Advice on Wearing Animal Prints, a kaleidoscope of shifting perspectives presenting the character Agatha, and Sunday Afternoons at the Gravel-pits, portraying a little girl and her father. Each poem tells an uncomfortable truth, through fireworks of surreal images. Every image is a surprise, sometimes funny, usually shocking, but at the same time archetypal as a brand new fairy-tale, and all this is achieved with crystalline brevity.
*chair of the 2015 T.S. Eliot Prize judges, on Jutland*

Hill has a consistently refreshing imaginative voice, and a habit of always somehow looking in the opposite direction from everybody else. Jutland, her latest book, is angry, funny, moving and unnerving by turns, with the best poems tackling father-daughter relationships, violence and forgiveness in an uncompromising style. Reading her work is the strange experience of feeling as though you are looking directly through a kaleidoscope, where everything you see shines more brightly than before, only half making sense.
*Daily Telegraph*

Her adoption of surrealist techniques of shock, bizarre, juxtaposition and defamiliarisation work to subvert conventional notions of self and the feminine… Hill returns repeatedly to fragmented narratives, charting extreme experience with a dazzling excess.
*Modern Women Poets*