Description
Book SynopsisThe Sparkling Jewel of Naturism brings together three seemingly unrelated poem sequences by 'this brilliant lyricist of human darkness' (Fiona Sampson). The poems in each spark off unexpected connections and surprises, despite their contrasting concerns: jealousy in 'Doormat' (being the object of someone else's jealousy), little girls in 'Happiness Is Just a Waste of Time', and married women in 'Blowfly'. Like all of Selima Hill's work, all three sequences in The Sparkling Jewel of Naturism chart 'extreme experience with a dazzling excess' (Deryn Rees-Jones), with startling humour and surprising combinations of homely and outlandish.
Trade ReviewArguably the most distinctive truth teller to emerge in British poetry… Despite her thematic preoccupations, there’s nothing conscientious or worthy about Hill’s work. She is a flamboyant, exuberant writer who seems effortlessly to juggle her outrageous symbolic lexicon…using techniques of juxtaposition, interruption and symbolism to articulate narratives of the unconscious. Those narratives are the matter of universal, and universally recognisable, psychodrama…hers is a poetry of piercing emotional apprehension, lightly worn… So original that it has sometimes scared off critical scrutineers, her work must now, surely, be acknowledged as being of central importance in British poetry – not only for the courage of its subject matter but also for the lucid compression of its poetics. -- Fiona Sampson * Guardian *
Hill, more than any other English poet, cranks out angry, impotent, abused and richly surreal Britain. And she is very very funny…fresh, fierce and convincing… A mood-swinging voice, talking to itself rather than to the reader, shows how pain and joy transform the material world. -- Claire Crowther * Poetry London *
