Selima Hill wins Michael Marks Award

The Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets has been given to Selima Hill for Advice on Wearing Animal Prints.

Now in its second year, the prize aims to spread awareness of the pamphlet as a means of bringing poetry to new audiences and is open to collections of 36 pages or less.

Novelist Ali Smith, chair of the judging panel, commented: 'Selima Hill's Advice on Wearing Animal Prints is a courageous work: startling, strange and unforgettable, it's a piece of disciplined wildness which grows in power with each re-read.'

Hill's other collections include Fruitcake, The Hat, Gloria and Sean's House. A review in the Guardian described her as being an 'inimitably exhilarating poet'.

In the Michael Marks Awards, poetry chapbook imprint HappenStance was named the UK poetry publisher of the year in pamphlet form in recognition of its programme for 2009.

Last year, Elizabeth Burns won the prize's pamphlet award for The Shortest Days, while Oystercatcher Press took home the publisher honour.