These poems pause for the spectacle: cloning technologies, super-slo-mo photography, narcotic cab rides. Making fun of consciousness, they describe a system of tripwires, pitfalls and decoys that this notion of daily viewership entails. These poems are paeans to our facility for duplicity and self-deception, where the act of living becomes more and more like watching a film in which we play no role.

David Seymour was born in Campbellton, New Brunswick and was raised beside the Niagara Escarpment in Milton, Ontario. In the past twelve years he has lived in Hamilton, Ontario, Leith, Scotland, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Toronto, Ontario, and Rosarito Beach, Mexico. During that time he has worked as a security guard, built in-ground pools, travelled through Europe, dish-pigged, acquired two academic degrees, lectured and led tutorials for English survey courses, taught a creative writing workshop, worked as a video store clerk, a book store clerk, proofread, was a staff writer and editorial coordinator for a magazine company, freelanced as a writer, played an extra, photo-doubled for Russell Crowe, learned to set sails on a tall ship, and worked as the production assistant for a casting director on numerous films. He currently lives in Toronto.

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'For Display Purposes Only is fighting trim, and poem after poem is a knockout blow.' – National Post

'Whip-pan-smart, “eet and protean, David Seymour's poems seem to contain the speed of the age. I love their ranginess and ambition, the way they rove through a here-and-now teeming with there-and-then, their speakers' “ights and turnings through the blizzard. This is a different world, and we live in it.' – Paul Farley

'From an unemployed Scot in mid-gripe to a photo double floating in a shooting tank, Seymour places us in the domains of various carefully considered strangers "made coherent by reason," but also by an energized curiosity and a humane amusement. Worlds only notionally, minimally there – worlds belonging to whoever briefly inhabits and dreams them – become fully dimensioned, clearly edged under his attention. It's uncanny how he pulls this off. David Seymour is a magician.' – Tim Lilburn