Hot on the heels of her previous book Men Who Feed Pigeons, Selima Hill’s Women in Comfortable Shoes is her 21st collection, presenting ten contrasting but well-fitting sequences of short poems relating to women:

Dressed and Sobbing: A woman is surprised to find herself getting older and lazier.

Fishface: A disobedient young girl is sent to a Catholic convent school to give her mother a break.

My Friend Weasel: The 50s. A girls’ boarding school where the girls are somehow managing to make new friends.

The Night Nurse: An older woman’s obsession with a young man and his dog.

Susan: On friendship. Two close friends, one of whom, Susan, is heading for a nervous breakdown.

The Fly: Norway. At home with Wenche and her son Anders Behring Breivik, terrorist.

Dolly: Dolly is a duck. The other 29 women are, in their various ways, human.

My Mother with a Beetle in Her Hair: A daughter’s passion for swimming - despite of her mother hating every minute.

Reduced to a Quivering Jelly: Vera is old, and getting older, but she doesn’t seem to care.

The Chauffeur: A pair of bad-tempered sisters, a parrot and a cat.