David Selzer

THE NAKBA

By David Selzer June 24, 2021 In Poetry 2 Gaza, Israel

‘…mourning and sorrow shall end,
when I return to Jerusalem…’

Mediaeval Jewish Prayer

‘We suffer from an incurable malady: Hope.’

Mahmoud Darwish

On a land mass that is the size of landlocked

Rutland, the smallest county in England,

Gaza, the Earth’s third most populated

polity, has two small rivers and a hill.

Its city, four thousand years ago,

was the site of a Pharaonic fortress.

THE SKY ABOVE

By David Selzer June 24, 2021 In Poetry 0 Beaumaris Goal, Carnedd Range

From the kitchen door of the holiday let,

down the hill, over roof tops, on a clear day,

are the summits of the mainland’s mountains;

from the front door the gaol’s stone grey massif;

above the cottage’s small courtyard,

where the privy was and now are festive lights

and a hot tub burbling, is a square of sky.

Around the corner in Steeple Lane

high in the prison wall is a door,

with rivets either side to hold the scaffold

when it was needed.

ON LITTLE EYE

By David Selzer June 24, 2021 In Poetry 1 Great Orme, Hilbre

Only the highest tides reach this small island’s

sandstone rocks. A collar of flaxen sand

surrounds it. A quarter of a mile north

is Middle Eye. A hundred yards further

is Hilbre, habitation of hermits,

custom’s officers, weather stations.

These three are rugged, stony outcrops

in the mouth of the estuary.

Leaving West Kirby’s suburban promenade,

we had walked, at low water, to Little Eye

across the Dee’s hard, striated sands.

Westward is Wales, and the redundant lighthouse

at Point of Ayr,

FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF HISTORY

By David Selzer June 24, 2021 In Poetry 1 Cumbria, Manton entrance

My granddaughter and I paused before Turner’s

‘War: the Exile and the Rock Limpet’

in the collection of the artist’s work

at Tate Britain, Millbank, beside the Thames.

The exile is Napoleon Bonaparte

on St Helena. He stands – in signature

outfit including the hat – arms folded,

contemplating obscure life in a rock pool.

A guard, musket shouldered, stands some paces off.

The sun rises or sets on a swirling, volcanic coast.

‘Was Napoleon really that tall?’ she asked.

BLOOMSBURY

By David Selzer June 24, 2021 In Poetry 3 Bexley, Bletchley

‘O, there you are,’ Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire.

ULYSSES, James Joyce

Joyce read his poems to Lady Gregory

in Dublin. She was impressed and gave him five pounds

to help fund his escape to Paris

from the ‘coherent absurdity’ (his words)

of Catholicism. She wrote to Yeats –

her close friend and patronee, who had lodgings

a five minute walk from Euston – to meet him

off the Holyhead train at six a.m.,

give him breakfast,

OTHER PEOPLE’S FLOWERS: ‘Twelve Poems’ by Clive Watkins

By David Selzer June 24, 2021 In Other People's Flowers 3 No tags

David Selzer and I first got to know each other in 1965 through the University of Liverpool Poetry Society. Under David’s energetic leadership, in 1966 the Society brought a young Seamus Heaney and a young Michael Longley from Northern Ireland to read to us. This was some months before Seamus Heaney’s first collection, Death of a Naturalist, appeared from Faber, and at this point Michael Longley had published no more than a single pamphlet. Neither had read outside Northern Ireland. The third of the notable young Northern Irish poets to emerge during those years, Derek Mahon,

All Posts By David Selzer

THE NAKBA

THE SKY ABOVE

ON LITTLE EYE

FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF HISTORY

BLOOMSBURY

OTHER PEOPLE’S FLOWERS: ‘Twelve Poems’ by Clive Watkins

David Selzer

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OTHER PEOPLE'S FLOWERS: Three Poems by Alan Horne

BLOOMSBURY

THE NAKBA

ON LITTLE EYE

OTHER PEOPLE'S FLOWERS: 'Twelve Poems' by Clive Watkins