{"id":4829,"date":"2015-06-04T08:56:49","date_gmt":"2015-06-04T08:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=4829"},"modified":"2016-01-23T14:55:40","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T13:55:40","slug":"selima-hill-jutland-reviewed-by-lucy-winrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=4829","title":{"rendered":"Selima Hill, Jutland<\/em> (Bloodaxe Books) \u00a39.95, reviewed by Lucy Winrow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hill\u2019s sixteenth poetry collection Jutland<\/i> unites the award-winning pamphlet Advice on Wearing Animal Prints<\/i> and a new sequence, Sunday Afternoons at the Gravel-Pits<\/i>. The former is comprised of twenty-six short, single stanza poems, each titled and ordered alphabetically. The omniscient narrator introduces us to \u2018Agatha\u2019, a social outsider who is possibility on the autistic spectrum (a subject previously explored in Fruitcake<\/i>). Her age is ambiguous, appearing childlike at times: \u201c[she] arranges her unicorns \/ up and down the carpet in the dark\u201d while in the poem \u2018E\u2019 she goes clubbing: \u201cThe other girls are blonde and wear tutus.\/ Her bodice creaks as if it\u2019s made of floor-boards.\u201d These images link to a recurring theme for Hill, cumbersome dresses being a motif, representing how individuals are pressurised into assuming or performing rigid feminine roles. In this instance, the noise and appearance of Agatha\u2019s dress draws attention to her fraudulent femininity, but also her inability to fit in socially in more general terms.<\/p>\n

Although Agatha lives independently, a reference to visitors in the opening poem \u2018A\u2019 creates an institutional atmosphere:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s lying on the floor as good as gold.
\nIt never moves. It never cries.
\nIt likes to simply lie there doing nothing.
\nBut visitors complain it smells of stew.<\/p>\n

The impersonal address and apparent disinterest in this concerning behaviour suggests absolute disconnection between Agatha and those around her. Childlike praise implies that docility is expected, while remarks on her odour are dehumanising and shaming. Incidents of physical and emotional abuse towards Agatha \u2013 \u201canyone could come in here and tread on it! \/ Could? They do! They kick it down the hall!\u201d \u2013 may be a metaphorical depiction of distress she experiences as a result of being misunderstood. The punctuation generates a boisterousness that communicates the narrator\u2019s perverse enjoyment, and this unsettling tone continues in \u2018R\u2019 which discusses the size of Agatha\u2019s flat:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like a lady\u2019s hand-bag it\u2019s so small \u2013
\nbut that\u2019s OK, she\u2019s only got one arm!
\n(That was mean. I\u2019m sorry. I should say
\nHow neat<\/i> she is, and that her needs are modest<\/i>.)<\/p>\n

Dark humour and a contrived apology exemplify how Agatha\u2019s mannerisms make her vulnerable to ridicule, heightening her detachment and shame. References to the missing arm, which is at one point spotted lying on the ground (\u2018X\u2019), could be characterised as a form of synecdoche whereby parts come to stand for an unnameable whole, demonstrating the cultural fragmentation endured by individuals like Agatha, but also the difficulty others encounter in relating to her.<\/p>\n

Agatha\u2019s disregard for social convention provides a lighter moment in \u2018U\u2019, sparkling with defiance and eccentricity: \u201cthey told her not to time and time again <\/i>\/ but here she is, on the actual day, \/ walking down the aisle wearing animal prints!\u201d This occasion becomes a liberating act of rebellion, subverting traditional notions of feminine reserve. However, the final poem \u2018Z\u2019 returns, with grim inevitability, to echo the opening lines:<\/p>\n

They hear her gnawing at the skirting board
\nbut by the time they reach her
\nit\u2019s too late.
\nShe\u2019s lying on the floor as good as gold.
\nNo wonder she can\u2019t breathe. She\u2019s got no breath.<\/p>\n

Hill captures how those who seem different are often neglected, ignored, punished and shamed by the society they inhabit; only when it is \u201ctoo late\u201d is Agatha spoken of as a person (she) rather than an object (it).<\/p>\n

Sunday Afternoons at the Gravel-Pits<\/i> is also concerned with shame, and the difficulty of intimacy. The sequence traces a father-daughter relationship, from the daughter\u2019s (the narrator) birth, until the father\u2019s death. This aspect of familial relationships is lesser documented in Hill\u2019s poetry which predominantly focusses on mothers.<\/p>\n

In the opening poem, the narrator explains: \u201cMy father, when he sees his new-born daughter, \/ stiffens like a golfer in the snow.\u201d Typically masculine, sporting imagery implies that his discomfort relates specifically to the baby\u2019s gender. This barely detectable movement signals an emotional and physical recoil, setting in motion a relationship that is fraught with extremes of closeness and distance. \u2018My Father\u2019s Chair\u2019 is suggestive of incest, a possible metaphor for the anxiety associated with giving and receiving intimacy: \u201cI never go towards it. On the contrary \/ I back away and then a firm hand \/ guides me from behind until I\u2019m held, \/ beside myself with rage<\/i>, between the knees.\u201d This claustrophobic scene contrasts with the detachment present in \u2018Cupboard\u2019:<\/p>\n

He\u2019s standing by my bed like a cupboard
\nstanding with no face in the dark<\/p>\n

but if I start to walk I think the cupboard
\nwill suddenly start to walk too.<\/p>\n

The lack of a face or body precludes the possibility of conventional human interaction, leaving the narrator uncertain as to how to proceed; attempts to traverse the gap between them results in frustration and further distancing. Similarly, fragmented descriptions of the father\u2019s body imply she cannot relate to him as a whole, but only in charged parts. In \u2018My Father\u2019s Crochet-hook\u2019 \u201cthe smell of crabmeat made his hands \/ smell of severed hands police might find,\u201d conveying fear that the loss she experiences daily will become permanent, with no means of recovery.<\/p>\n

The father\u2019s elusive nature elevates him to mythical status; he is never seen with a beard \u201cbecause he only puts it on \/ afterwards, when he\u2019s left the house \/ to go and live his other life, as God\u201d and he dresses enticingly \u201cthe way a wolf is smartly-dressed in stories.\u201d Allusions to God appear throughout Hill\u2019s oeuvre, symbolic of pervasive and controlling masculinity \u2013 here it serves to augment the narrator\u2019s shame regarding her father\u2019s rejection. This may be why she engages in small acts of rebellion (opening the cage door for her father\u2019s canary) and more sinister, unspoken behaviours at the \u2018gravel-pits\u2019 where she claims \u201cI myself am the most violent, \/ or so my father thinks, but even he \/ has no idea how violent I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tone becomes increasingly direct and contemplative as the narrator considers possible routes out of this emotional impasse, including forgiveness<\/i>: \u201cby which I mean \/ hope for an entirely different past,\u201d kindness<\/i>, which carries its own perils: \u201cbut what if being kind is exploitative, \/ redundant, ineffective and demeaning,\u201d and love<\/i> \u201cthat comes so close yet seems so far away | that flickers with a light we are unworthy of.\u201d \u2018Rage\u2019 arrives at the realisation that being absorbed in our own emotions creates a blind spot: \u201cit never crossed my mind that I myself \/ neither knew nor cared who he <\/i>might be.\u201d<\/p>\n

The event of the father\u2019s death appears to place the possibility of transformation through forgiveness, kindness or love permanently out of reach. However, in the final poem there is a sense of something hard-won, after a great deal of reflection. The narrator describes being touched by someone \u201cyesterday,\u201d triggering an image of her father:<\/p>\n

only for a second, which is nothing,
\nbut to me it was like everything:<\/p>\n

I saw him, or I thought I saw him, shiver,
\nas if he were a pool or a whippet.<\/p>\n

These final lines, so characteristic of Hill\u2019s startling, inventive imagery, reflects a moment, tremulous and full \u2013 far from being a frustrating flicker just out of reach, it feels inviting and comforting.
\n 
\nLucy Winrow<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hill\u2019s sixteenth poetry collection Jutland unites the award-winning pamphlet Advice on Wearing Animal Prints and a new sequence, Sunday Afternoons at the Gravel-Pits. The former is comprised of twenty-six short, single stanza poems, each titled and ordered alphabetically. The omniscient narrator introduces us to \u2018Agatha\u2019, a social outsider who is possibility on the autistic spectrum […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nSelima Hill, Jutland (Bloodaxe Books) \u00a39.95, reviewed by Lucy Winrow - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=4829\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Selima Hill, Jutland (Bloodaxe Books) \u00a39.95, reviewed by Lucy Winrow - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hill\u2019s sixteenth poetry collection Jutland unites the award-winning pamphlet Advice on Wearing Animal Prints and a new sequence, Sunday Afternoons at the Gravel-Pits. 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