The site has been running since May 2009 and attracted visitors from Austria, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, India, Ireland, Israel, New Brunswick, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philipines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, UK and USA. On average, there are approximately 6 visitors per day, of whom 4 are new to the site.
If you would like to get in touch with me, please mailme@davidselzer.com – or, if you have a thought, comment or message regarding the site as whole, particular pages and/or specific pieces please enter it below. (Your email address will remain private and confidential. If you would like me to post a comment on the site but withhold your name, please let me know).
To post a comment directly on a specific piece of work, put the cursor over the title. A window opens: ‘Permanent link toFAR ABOVE RUBIES’, for example. Click on the window. Below the text of the poem, you will see, highlighted in blue, ‘leave a response’. Click on that.
I had thought originally that I should respond to each comment posted – not least, out of politeness. Then I thought that I was in danger of seeming like the troll under the bridge in the Grimm fairy tale – and therefore should only respond when it was appropriate to do so. I am, nevertheless, very keen to enter into conversations.
Many thanks.
#1 by Rob Golding - May 28th, 2009 at 07:26
Congratulations on the launch and the very best wishes with the new site. I like the layout and ease of use – plain and effective. Good to navigate too.
#2 by David - May 29th, 2009 at 09:10
I was aiming to ensure that the site itself would be a quality product: that the aim has been achieved is down to the web architect and engineer, Sam Hutchinson – http://www.realigndesign.com
#3 by John H - June 1st, 2009 at 23:04
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST has a great feel to it – a spellbinding grip on two lives sharing the same outlook, or is it two outlooks sharing the same life!? Anyway – it was a piece of magic, with a glimpse of how the Life in Liverpool was after all rewarding.
And a great project! A beacon to us all!
#4 by David - June 3rd, 2009 at 19:45
I hadn’t thought of the piece being about perceptions of, and perpectives on, the past but, of course, they’re at the heart of memory, selecting the supposed facts.
‘Life in Liverpool’ – a capital pun!
It would be good if other poets saw the light but a book in the hand perhaps is still worth two on the web to some.
#5 by Lesley Johnson - June 11th, 2009 at 13:46
CHUZPAH CROPPER
How lovely to come face to face with that photo of a Wise Man from the (North) West! It puts me in mind of an old story concerning another pic of Mr Selzer.
Some years after the publication of his collection, ‘Elsewhere’, our hero, finding himself in Charing Cross Road, was minded to test out Foyle’s famous claim to stock every book in the English Language currently in print. Would he indeed find his work still there? Answer arrived in the warming affirmative. Proudly he took his volume from the shelf, opened it, scanned a page at random, and was spontaneously moved to uncap his pen and boldly sign just below the author’s name.
A female voice hissed at his shoulder – and just what did he think he was doing defacing shop property? The explanation that all he was up to was signing his own book and thus enhancing its value (“Here I am on the back cover photo!”) cut no ice. She saw absolutely no resemblance between this criminal and that poet! (And indeed the addition of a fine beard plus several years of sybaritic living had somewhat altered the erstwhile wide eyed boy wonder).
Things were soon straightened out thanks to Driving Licence etc., and mutual apologies tendered. However, it must be said that, as our accomplished wordsmith, left he was muttering a couple of very overworked phrases.
#6 by john plummer - July 24th, 2009 at 08:42
Have now made a little time to browse and enjoy your writings. Although I am no poet, I realise – and it is no surprise – we are moved by a similar muse. Tiny stories that illuminate the world, landscapes that echo the generations, cruelties from which we never escape, beauty in all its forms, a sense of history that connects to the present – and more.
#7 by David - July 26th, 2009 at 15:44
RESPONSE TO JOHN PLUMMER
A nice summation of the themes, John – and ‘tiny stories’ feels just right.
#8 by John Plummer - August 22nd, 2009 at 11:17
Enjoyed the latest five poems, particularly THE HEART’S TESTIMONY – http://www.davidselzer.com/2009/08/the-hearts-testimony/.
You will not have written this rather bleak perspective on fractured, deceptive histories just to provoke me but it deserves a counterweight (albeit prosaic). There is a compelling beauty, even purity, about the remote past. We connect with it both intelligently and imaginatively. The famed sites, like Skara Brae, stun the senses and tell an undisguised story of lives lived confidently with an enterprise and tenacity we have lost. The villagers left by the back door just before we arrived – or so it feels. Life and community worked until the elements betrayed them.
The many clusters of hut circles, burial/ceremonial sites, and fields – barely detectable traces until our sated vision is better focused, are everywhere, ancestors for our common humanity. Science keeps unravelling more clues to these ancient landscapes. But our minds can excavate the connections. Fulfilment rather than emptiness.
#9 by Arthur Kemelman - August 29th, 2009 at 13:46
THE HEART’S TESTIMONY – http://www.davidselzer.com/2009/08/the-hearts-testimony/.
I don’t quite agree with John Plummer’s interpretation of this rather beautiful and sad poem. I think David is not talking about a particular site but rather about how, as we get older, we become gumshoes, detectives, etc. seeking to fathom and understand and explore our own personal history, the ‘deceiving legacy of meanings’, that we encounter in our mind. True, there are elements of a physical site in the poem, describing the town where the poet originally grew up and which he is now visiting. But what is important to the poet is not a particular physical landscape but the mental landscape of today, that exists in his mind.
#10 by Mark Chapman - August 31st, 2009 at 16:12
THE HEART’S TESTIMONY – http://www.davidselzer.com/2009/08/the-hearts-testimony/.
For me there are two things that I draw from the poem, both of them from the same line – ‘its deceiving legacy of meanings’.
The poem is reminding me that we like to pick and choose what we remember consciously, much of which alters as we get older to fit with our present image of our former selves.
The other thing that strikes me is how we like to transpose our values onto history, and use them to understand our archeaology. The stones, tiles and amulets are more honest than our interpretations – or the words that followed in later centuries.
#11 by John Huddart - September 9th, 2009 at 21:44
THE HEART’S TESTIMONY – http://www.davidselzer.com/2009/08/the-hearts-testimony/.
Arthur is dead close to a quite bleak poem where personal history and belonging are seen when peeled away to reveal that nothing has value in the end. I too was very touched by the poem – because I know the landscape David describes, and what it means to him – his usual delight to be Hoole’s gumshoe burnt to ash.
#12 by SCES - September 14th, 2009 at 14:11
On reading the opening of THE MEMORIAL – http://www.davidselzer.com/category/screenplays/ – for the first time, I had thought that the story was going to take us through a pedantic journey of Edward’s life – ‘son inherits estate, son meets new love and ditches old love etc. etc.’
What emerges is a unique and compelling narrative set against the background of the aftermath of WW1 and a changing world. The challenges that Edward faces are related to real events in a fictionalised form and, because they are not presented in the usual melodramatic way – we all recognise the ‘will they won’t they escape’ mining disaster scenario!, they have a contemporary feel.
The final unveiling of the memorial of the title has a resonance with the similar calling of names at Ground Zero and the recent opening of the UK’s national war memorial at Alrewas, Staffordshire – http://www.thenma.org.uk/. The individual stainless steel pillars erected to the victims of the London July 7th bombings – http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/07/july-7-bombings-memorial – this summer is almost an updating of THE MEMORIAL’s final scene. Uncanny!
#13 by Lesley Johnson - September 17th, 2009 at 10:35
4TH AUGUST 1944 – http://www.davidselzer.com/2009/08/4th-august-1944/.
I like this a lot, not least because it makes me ponder upon whether or not Dad was justified in publishing the diary. As Anne wanted to be famous, I guess he was. But had she cherished her privacy (as do most teenagers) I should feel otherwise, and this despite the fact that countless youngsters have been ‘reached’ by her words, and the play, and the film.
This aspect of authors’ rights has patently been gnawing at me for decades. In the 70s at some Edinburgh Festival Writers’ Conference, focus Biography – Antonia Fraser et al on the platform – I had the chance to put my question:
Which is the worse crime after a death – to destroy the work which a writer fully intended to publish (as John Murray did Byron’s)? Or to publish work the writer had requested should be destroyed (as John Middleton Murry did Katherine Mansfield’s)? …
Pity that mine was the final question of the afternoon – we exited still arguing.
I leave it on the table.
#14 by Emma Boden-Lee - September 17th, 2009 at 16:59
Dear David,
At last my turn to have a peruse and there is much to inspire and touch in what I have read so far: Anne Frank, First Date, In Memoriam and the one that mentions Ella Fitzgerald – I was tempted to click on her name. Will come back and visit again when I have another window in my day.
One of the joys of poetry, for me anyway, is the possibility of a quick dip, and the chance that even a very few words can get one thinking, sometimes re-thinking and sometimes for days.
Emma x
#15 by Geoff Wall - November 30th, 2009 at 12:28
David, I’m greatly enjoying your website, though the need for gainful employment hampers a full response
Just read ACCIDENTS.
Perfect middle – the boy listening in.
‘tall for my age’ is brilliant.
Geoff
#16 by David - December 1st, 2009 at 10:58
Many thanks, Geoff, for taking the time out from the Groves of Academe! David