Selima Hill’s twenty-second collection A Man, a Woman & a Hippopotamus presents ten sequences of short poems, prose poems and short pieces on relationships and doings between people, animals and the world at large. Self-portrait with a Bucket: On being an artist’s model. The Mathematician: A man and woman trying to agree. A Man, a Woman & a Chihuahua: Different people’s senses of bafflement with each other. Baby Peter: A homeless man and his mother. Agatha: An afternoon in a care home. Room 17: A 70-year-old woman, baffled but determined. Men in Shorts and Bonkers: Out walking with dogs and their humans. Until the Tears Roll Down My Cheeks like Honey: Two strangers in a field. The Surly Mothers of Successful Men: Short pieces of memoir.