Dancing Lessons for the Very Shy is part of a sequence of titles dealing with an older woman’s obsession with a younger man. It follows The Night-Nurse (2022) and precedes The Passion-Fruit Hotel and My Mother’s Knives.

Selima Hill received a Cholmondeley Award in 1986 and first prize in the Arvon International Poetry Competition with part of The Accumulation of Small Acts of Kindness (1989), one of several extended sequences in Gloria: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2008). Also featured in Gloria, Violet (1997) was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize, T.S. Eliot Prize and Whitbread Poetry Award, while Bunny (2001) won the Whitbread Poetry Award and was also shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Selima is the latest winner of the King’s Gold Medal (2022). Her 21st collection, Women in Comfortable Shoes, will be published by Bloodaxe in 2023. Selima grew up in a family of painters in farms in England and Wales, and has lived in Dorset for the past 40 years. She lives by the sea with two large dogs and lots of spiders.

Limited Edition / Signed
ISBN 978-1-913749-38-5 / 84 pages / 175 x 120mm / Made using Wicotex, Stardream and Arena stocks.