Inter Alia is the long-awaited first collection by one of Canada's most talented young poets. His work has been widely published in journals and was selected by Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane for Breathing Fire 2: Canada's New Poets. He is heir to the English metaphysical poets in many of his preoccupations, with a good dash of Robert Bly, but his technique is very much influenced by his interests in Oriental forms — haiku, waka, haibun, etc. Seymour is smart, yes; but this is above all poetry of deep feeling. Its publication marks the appearance of a unique and important new voice in Canadian poetry.

The Plain Fact of the Matter

Holding the cup in your hands, white. Watching it find a way to your lips;
the time it takes a cigarette to reach my mouth. You look as though you
are about to expose yourself, give up some secret. Or not. Your finger
circles the rim which catches your gaze; the one thing this moment
you want to understand without words. Ever have. Right before I
speak, you cock your head, bring your ear in close for this new,
less cruel language — in the cup, the shy turn of your neck.

Smoke is exhaled, broomswept dust in a sunlit room.

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.

David Seymour's profile page

"Through its multi-faceted suites and its fugue, its haiku and haibun, Inter Alia creates a space in which many voices live in unity, musically entwined with true silence."--Warren Heiti, The Malahat Review

" ... Disciplined without coming across as restrained; and intellectually rigorous without being pretentious or austere. The energy in Seymour's poems arises from the resonances between different descriptions and ideas, between the gaps that arises in shifts of tone and perspective ... Inter Alia is a valuable book of poems."--Daniel Scott Tysdal, echolocation