King Charles

King Charles Getty

King Charles has approved this year's award of His Majesty’s Gold Medal for Poetry to Selima Hill.

The Poetry Medal Committee recommended Selima Hill as the recipient of the Medal for 2022 on the basis of her body of work, and what continues to be a flourishing and strengthening creativity, with special recognition for "Gloria: Selected Poems", a compilation from her first ten collections, published in 2008.

Selima Hill grew up in a family of painters in farms in England and Wales, and has lived in Dorset for the past 40 years. 

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The Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage said, “Selima Hill is an inimitable talent. The mind is fragile and unreliable in her poetry, but is also tenacious and surprising, capable of the most extraordinary responses, always fighting back with language as its survival kit.

“Life in general might be said to be her subject, the complications, contradictions and consequences of simply existing. Nevertheless, Hill’s writing is eminently readable and approachable, even fun at times, the voice of a person and a poet who will not be quieted and will not conform to expectations, especially poetic ones.”

This is the first Gold Medal for Poetry to be presented in The King’s name since His Majesty’s Accession.

History of The King’s Gold Medal for Poetry

The Gold Medal for Poetry was instituted by King George V in 1933 at the suggestion of the then Poet Laureate, John Masefield. The Medal is awarded for excellence in poetry, on the basis either of a body of work over several years, or for an outstanding poetry collection issued during the year of the award. The poet is from the United Kingdom or a Commonwealth realm, and the poems will have been published.

During Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the Medal was known as The Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.

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