Ulteriori informazioni
This posthumous collection by Gavin Selerie brings together all the uncollected poems from the last phase of his life - fewer than might have expected perhaps, as he was also busy in the final part of his life with the composition of a memoir of his visit to the USA in the late 1960s. That memoir, Edges of Memory, will be published in due course.
As Robert Hampson's obituary details, Gavin's work tended towards long forms, based on extensive research, although shorter works did crop up throughout his life, as evidenced by the large volume of Collected Sonnets (Shearsman Books, 2019). These last poetic forays are shorter poems, although inevitably they also include a long-ish sequence centred on the author's favourite London haunt of Cricklewood.
Info autore
Gavin Selerie (1947-2023) was born in London. He taught at Birkbeck, University of London for many years. His books include 'Azimuth' (1984), 'Roxy' (1996) and 'Le Fanu's Ghost' (2006)-all long sequences with linked units. 'Music's Duel: New and Selected Poems 1972-2008' was published by Shearsman in 2009. This includes a good deal of fugitive material, besides more widely available work. Selerie collaborated with the writer and artist Alan Halsey, notably in the book 'Days of '49' (1999). His work appeared in anthologies such as 'The New British Poetry' (1988), 'Other: British & Irish Poetry since 1970' (1999) and 'The Reality Street Book of Sonnets' (2008). His poems generally involved a layering of voices through history and landscape. He wrote extensively about London, reflecting his roots (an Italian family in Soho and an English family of wood-carvers). He has been a core member of the London poetry scene since the 1970s. His final large-scale publications were 'Hariot Double', which juxtaposes renaissance and modern elements, and 'Collected Sonnets' (Shearsman Books, 2019).
