'Adventurous, risk-taking' Hill awarded King's Gold Medal for Poetry

British poet Selima Hill will be awarded the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry 2022, the first Gold Medal for Poetry to be presented in King Charles’ name since his ascension. 

The award committee recommended Hill as this year’s recipient of the medal, which celebrates excellence in poetry, on the basis of her body of work which spans nearly four decades. 

Hill published her first book of poems, Saying Hello at the Station (Chatto & Windus) in 1984 and has produced a further 19 collections since then. The committee, chaired by Simon Armitage, gave special recognition for her 2008 retrospective Gloria: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe), which brings together work from her first 10 collections, including the Whitbread Poetry Award-winning Bunny (Bloodaxe). 

Poet Laureate Armitage described Hill as an “inimitable talent”. He said: “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.” 

Neil Astley, Hill’s publisher at Bloodaxe Books, said it had been a “delight and a privilege” to work with her over the past 30 years. He added: “Her work has become even more adventurous, risk-taking and idiosyncratically hers over that time, something I’ve loved witnessing at first hand and enjoyed enormously as a reader.”

Hill – who grew up in a family of painters on farms in England and Wales – has lived in Dorset for the past 40 years. Her most recent collection, Men Who Feed Pigeons (Bloodaxe), was shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Collection as well as for the 2021 T S Eliot Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize 2022. 

She joins the seven Bloodaxe poets who were previously honoured with The Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry: Grace Nichols (2021), David Constantine (2020), Gillian Allnutt (2016), Imtiaz Dharker (2014), John Agard (2012), Fleur Adcock (2006) and the late R S Thomas (1964). 

Hill will be the 53rd recipient of the award, which was instituted by King George V in 1933 at the suggestion of the then Poet Laureate John Masefield. Her 21st book of poetry, Women in Comfortable Shoes, will be published by Bloodaxe in June 2023.