Poetry Book Society

This latest publication by Selima Hill not only won the Flarestack Poets Pamphlet Competition 2009 (jointly with Cliff Forshaw), but also won the Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets in June 2010.

It was praised by the Chair of the Judges, Ali Smith, for being ‘startling, strange and unforgettable... a piece of disciplined wildness which grows with each re-read.' Having read the pamphlet over and over (it's made up of 26 short poems, written as a sequence organised under each letter of the alphabet), I can certainly vouch for its re-readability, but not just in the sense of wanting to re-read a favourite poem or line, but more a compulsion to understand and unravel the riddle of poems; it is a pamphlet layered, as the title alludes to, in many ‘skins'.

Its bright red cover, with a title that suggests a politicised stance on the use of animal skin (ironically so), the pamphlet led me to believe it was a kind of poetic manifesto in defence of animal rights. This was exaggerated further by the use of the alphabet to organise the poems. Certainly the first two poems (‘A' and ‘B') reinforce this with what seems to be an animal skin lying on the floor being described as if it was a child: ‘it's lying on the floor as good as gold' and then in ‘B' an incredulous: ‘but how could someone do a thing like that? Anyone could come in here and tread on it!' from the narrator.

My expectations at this point were for Hill to base the entire sequence of poems from the perspective of the animal skin, as witnessed by an emphatic narrator. However, at ‘C', we are introduced to Agatha, who, we are told, ‘arranges her unicorns up and down the carpet in the dark' and who is called ‘an idiot' by ‘somebody'. The pamphlet, in effect, quickly slips into a completely new ‘skin' here and my assumptions about this being a poem sequence primarily concerned with animal rights were overturned.

What Hill seems to be doing is challenging and unsettling the reader's position and viewpoint by shifting perspectives (or changing skins). She does this to explore not one form of abuse (human to animal), but varying levels and forms of abuse. Hill's vehicle to do this through is Agatha, who we are introduced to in ‘C', but who is arguably present from the start.

Agatha ‘wears' many different ‘skins' to allow Hill to explore abuse from different angles. At first, she seems to be a child put down by ‘somebody' - ‘somebody tells her she's an idiot' (‘C'). However, Hill doesn't go on to develop and substantiate this suggested adult-child abuse in the next poem, ‘D', but, instead, presents Agatha as a form of abuser too: ‘she thinks she is entitled to have slaves/and pull their greasy tails till they mew'.

To achieve an exploration of abused and abuser through Agatha, Hill changes Agatha's age throughout. Sometimes Agatha is a young woman ‘abused' by the clothing she wears: ‘encumbered by her lace-encrusted dress/she hurries down the street to the club' (‘E'), and sometimes she is a child who bites doctors and friends: ‘this person wants to kiss her but she bites him -/that's not the way to make new friends, Agatha!' As well as Agatha's age changing, she also moves from illness and disability: ‘she's only got one arm which is sad/but anyhow that's a good excuse/to do whatever she wants very slowly' (‘F), to strength: ‘she drags the piano through the open door/and out onto the terrace where she smashes it' (‘W').

Hill takes this further by physically transforming Agatha into an animal in some poems. In ‘M', Agatha is described wearing an animal skin: ‘she's on the terrace, dressed as a cow', and in ‘Y', Agatha seems to have changed into a sheep: ‘in the little park, meanwhile, Agatha/(although she is a sheep!) is getting cross'. As I touched on earlier, it is also suggested that Agatha is an actual skin lying on the floor in the first two poems, later in ‘O' when ‘she thinks a rat comes in and chews her nose', and in the final poem: ‘she is lying on the floor as good as gold' (Z).

What is most impressive about this pamphlet is technique. Hill's use of language, form, image and voice allow her to not only broach a darker subject, but delve deeply into it. Coupled with this is her ability to flawlessly navigate wild leaps of the imagination and invite us to suspend our disbelief, which we willingly do, Three of Hill's major devices to achieve this are humour, a seemingly simple, almost childlike use of language, and consistently surprising similes. The image of ‘a tall giraffe bespangled with white fairy lights' who, having kicked Agatha, ‘totters off into the music room/twinkling its electric tiara' (‘M') is amusing. This technique is very powerful as it allows Hill to cover difficult subject matter without overwhelming the reader.

The ‘simple' language she uses serves this purpose too, particularly the narrator's voice, which often mimics that of a child: ‘Agatha's a pretty thing - much too pretty if you ask me!' (‘D'). Hill's trademark similes, which seem somehow completely wrong and completely right, allow her to spin a well-worn subject in a dramatic new light - ‘suddenly two girls in red appear/and slide across the frozen lake like two pistols' (‘I') and ‘her petticoats all crushed to death like piglets' (‘H') - and propel the sequence forward.

What's particularly interesting and unnerving about this pamphlet is that we find ourselves being ‘entertained'. In effect, as readers, we are in the awkward position of being amused by abuse and suffering, in parts, leading to more complex, moral questions around the role of the witness. Again though, as with Hill's treatment of subject matter, she doesn't overwhelm us or foreground this; it's another ‘skin' within the text. And Hill does not seek (as I first thought from the cover and title etc.) to take any one moral position here - hence the use of layering.

The way the poems jump around, not following an obvious chronology or narrative, resisting any linear understanding, despite being organised alphabetically, serves this purpose too - we never quite know where we are, what position to adopt, how we should read the text. This is perhaps the greatest strength of this pamphlet and why we do feel compelled to re-read it. And, as Ali Smith observed, with each new reading, the pamphlet does indeed grow as we uncover more and more layers. I would take this further though and suggest it grows on us, with each poem's uncanny ability to get under our skin. So, a word of warning before you read: you won't be receiving advice on animal prints, you'll be wearing them.


Samantha Jackson commissions books for Pearson Education and is studying part-time for an MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work has been selected for a poetry project celebrating Selfridge's 100th anniversary and featured on a poetry DVD, Asking a Shadow to Dance, produced by Oxfam, Marylebone, London. Forthcoming poems are due out this year with Ambit. More information about Samantha can be found here.