bird of winter

Alice Hiller is a writer from London and Dieppe. She is the author of The T-Shirt Book (Ebury Press), and holds a PhD from UCL. Her journalism has been published in the Observer supplement and her reviews in The Poetry Review, Poetry London, The TLS, Magma, Literary Imagination and Essays in Criticism. She was the founding Reviews Editor of Harana Poetry and interviews poets in depth about ‘saying the difficult thing’ on her alicehiller blog. Hiller was a Jerwood Arvon Poetry Mentee for 2017-2018 and shortlisted for the Arts Foundation Poetry Fellowship in 2019. Her poems have appeared in Poetry London, Stand, The Cambridge Literary Review, Magma, tentacular, one hand clapping, perverse and elsewhere. Hiller founded and runs a free poetry workshop aimed at supporting and developing poets working with ‘less welcome’ materials. She curates the Estate of the émigré sculptor Oscar Nemon, about whom she has also written.

‘Hiller offers extraordinary resilience and moments of immense, liberatory tenderness… This is a harrowing book, yes, but ultimately, with its invitation to “billow forth the wrecks we hold”, with its emphasis on resistance and joy, it is a staggeringly beautiful piece of life-affirming work.’ Stephanie Sy-Quia, The Poetry Review