Violet

Violet is full of double trouble: startlingly wild, often bizarre poems on sisters and husbands, sex, ducks and fridges. If Selima Hill seems to show as strange a portrait of family life as anything by Buñuel or Almodovar, that is because her mirror reflects more than just surfaces. Hers is a looking-glass world seen through a fairground mirror, which exaggerates and accuses as well as telling a few home truths. Both distorting and revealing, Violet explodes lies and tells them too; exposes myths and creates them. In the end, nothing is certain, except that there are giant cows paddling in the stream, sloths singing in the trees, ants herding ferocious sheep, and ailing fish in the fish hospital. When the mirror cracks, with pain or laughter, the book splits into two halves. My Sister's Sister is the story of two sisters, from the early days of their childhood to their final estrangement after the death of their mother. My Husband's Wife is a woman whose love for her husband survives the painful breakdown of their marriage. 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.