Review – A Man, A Woman & A Hippopotamus

A Man, A Woman & A Hippopotamusby Selima HillGenres: Poetry Pages: 269 Rating: Synopsis: Selima Hill’s twenty-second collection A Man, a Woman & a Hippopotamus presents ten sequences of short poems, prose poems and short pieces on relationships and doings between people, animals and the world at large. I borrowed Selima Hill’s A Man, A Woman, & A Hippopotamus from the library pretty much just because of the title (and cover), I must admit. I really wanted to know what the hippo had to do with anything. In the end, I’m not much the wiser: the poems are very small fragments, and it’s not clear to me that they were meant to be connected or build on each other much. There were some interesting images/fragments, and it’s not that I thought the writing was bad, it’s more that I just didn’t find the very disconnected/fragmentary nature of it very engaging or enjoyable. I don’t think I’m totally put off Selima Hill’s work; I’d be game to try something else! But if it’s all like this, perhaps…