Selima Hill (born 13 October 1945 in Hampstead) is a British poet.
I like to think that I'm giving a voice to the silenced.
There's the space that you soar into, the space that you sometimes break through to, and hang in. A sort of gasp or gap.
An audience sabotages my freedom, devastates my innocence, corrupts my integrity, inhibits my great joy - and of course gives me further to fall.
Poetry is a big space and I love it.
I feel much safer faced with a blank sheet of paper than I do with a real person.
I step naked into the shower of truth - whole-hearted, bloody-minded, utterly selfish, no longer even pretending to enjoy or understand anything.
The very things I used to be told off for - daydreaming, exaggerating, making mistakes, wild guessing, contradicting, spying, being obsessive, being reckless - for these, suddenly, I am being praised.
I'm not so sure that the value of art is all it is cracked up to be.
When I was first published it was like having people rushing in coming to find out where I was hiding. Scary!
All I do and say and think 'as a poet' is much truer and more intimate than anything I say face to face.
If I knew how to say it directly, I would not need to write poetry. I would just talk to people and be happy.
Being a poet is like having an invisible partner. It isn't easy. But you can't live without it either. Talent is only 10 per cent. The rest is obsession.
What am I writing for anyway? Is it like dreaming? Is it a benevolent process? Something that moves the past forward? And what about those people who say all you get from looking at the past is a stiff neck?