LIDIA VIANU

The Desperado Age

British Literature at the Start of the Third Millennium

SELIMA HILL (b. 1945) writes pomes which constantly marvel at the world and the more they learn, the less they seem to know. Her open soul seems to be saying, Do not fear to tread,  just do not be the fools who rush in. She has a passion for disguising cruelty as candid irony. She speaks in stories told from the point of view of a persona, a child, a woman in love, a jealous ex-wife. She is not afraid to be her own persona, she does not ban autobiography even though she never confesses. If we are to know anything about her real life, we must read between the lines. She does not hide, but does not tell us about herself either. Her small fables are food for the soul.

Selima Hill’s poems are short and exasperatingly clear. No rhyme, no poetic lace or fireworks, just a twist of the tongue and the whole one-stanza long poem changes colour. She writes chameleonic poems which turn red in the last line. Her smile is catching and although her topics are all painful – sadness would be too mild a word to characterize her – the poems laugh:

Please can I have a man who wears corduroy.

Please can I have a man

who knows the names of 100 different roses;

who doesn't mind my absent-minded rabbits

wandering in and out

as if they own the place,

who makes me creamy curries from fresh lemon-grass,

who walks like Belmondo in  A Bout de Souffle—,

who sticks all my carefully-selected postcards —

sent from exotic cities

he doesn't expect to come with me to,

but would if I asked, which I will do —

with nobody else's, up on his bedroom wall,

starting with Ivy, the Famous Diving Pig,

whose picture, in action, I bought ten copies of;

who talks like Belmondo too, with lips as smooth

and tightly-packed as chocolate-coated

(melting chocolate) peony buds;

who knows that piling himself stubbornly on top of me

like a duvet stuffed with library books and shopping-bags

is all too easy: please can I have a man

who is not prepared to do that.

Who is not prepared to say I'm 'pretty' either.

Who, when I come trotting in from the bathroom

like a squealing freshly-scrubbed piglet

that likes nothing better than a binge

of being affectionate and undisciplined and uncomplicated,

opens his arms like a trough for me to dive into. (Please Can I Have a Man)

Master of understatement, she manages to tell a whole life’s story without naming one single real incident. She replaces the sad negative (I do not have a man, I do not have a mother, I do not have a sister who loves me) by the childish prayer that she may get them one fine day. She hopes for it with all her soul, although she knows very well it may never come to pass.

Selima Hill’s clarity is bewitching. She draws you into knowing things you would never suspect anyone would dare tell you. Her conversationalism is both extreme and exquisite. Her words are the simplest, the least pretentious ever, and with her arsenal of simple words she manages to convey the most complicated feelings. This is the real Desperado use of clarity. It can be found in Kazuo Ishiguro or Graham Swift in fiction, and in Alan Brownjohn in poetry.

In a way, Selima Hill’s poems are like the fantastic in Gabriel Garcia Marquez. They step on to the pavement of common words and suddenly they fly up into memory and conjure the most intense feeling. Then becomes now under our own eyes and, although we see it happening, we are musclebound, we cannot make a movement. The poet has a peculiar way of being personal, of telling us the most intimate things about herself while she seems to be chatting along down a country lane with animals and birds. Her universe is unbelievably familiar, yet incredibly uncomfortable. We are buried under her pains and frustrations. Her soul engulfs us before we have realized what is happening in her lines.

Although we side with the poet at the end of every poem, she does not feel sorry for herself. Her irony is her courage.          

She mocks at the worst of pains and teaches us poetry with open arms:

I have fallen in love with the Gobi Desert, O Lord.

I have fallen in love with arms in the shape of hair.

I have fallen in love with lips like bible lands.

I have fallen in love, O Lord.

Wish me well. (Portrait of My Lover as My Ex-Lover)