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Southport

POETRY

CROSBY BEACH, MERSEYSIDE, 2030

David Selzer By David Selzer7 Comments2 min read1.7K views


For John Plummer


After lengthy negotiations between

Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council

and Another Place Ltd, the cast iron

statues that comprise the installation,

‘Another Place’, will be removed from the beach.

A third of the statues is completely

submerged. At a high water a third more

disappear, and those, nearest what remains

of the sand dunes, show only their heads.

The hundred figures, all cast from a mould

of the naked body of the artist,

Sir Antony Gormley, will be erected

along the perimeter of a nearby

golf course the Council acquired under

the Global Warming Mitigation Act.

The barnacles, which adhere to the statues,

will in time, it is anticipated, drop off.


A spokesperson for the artist explained

that the protracted negotiations focussed

on which direction the statues would face.

A compromise was reached whereby some would face

south towards Liverpool’s two cathedrals

high up at either end of Hope Street;

some north towards Southport’s hinterland

and the flooded fields of the Fylde’s coastal plain;

and some still westwards towards what used to be

the ambiguous promise of the oceans.


Before the installation of the art work

the beach was seldom visited – unsafe

for swimming, a rudimentary car park

beside the Coastguard Station, no toilets.

The occasional dog-walker might note

the profusion of razor clams, or specks

of coal, scattered among the seaweed, from seams

at Point of Ayr on the distant Welsh coast.

The influx of visitors required

a tarmacked car park and proper toilets –

both frequently inundated now.

The Coastguard Station is on twenty foot piles.


Crosby Beach is seven miles or so

from the centre of Liverpool, most of which

was razed in the May Blitz of ’41.

Much of the rubble was dumped on the beach,

cordoned off from the public throughout the war.

The detritus is so wind-swept and now sea-swept

that it resembles pebbles spring tides have cast –

except for the tell-tale clay of a brick,

a fragment of cut stone.




Note: ANOTHER PLACE – Sylvia Selzer: https://www.sylviaselzer.com/2014/08/17/another-place/

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POETRY

THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL

David Selzer By David Selzer7 Comments1 min read1.8K views

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter – tale

of adultery and obsession –

was published in 1850. In the year

the Crimean War began, he became

the U.S. Consul in Liverpool,

a post gifted by his friend the President.

He did not like the job despite the fees

from the cargoes of cotton and molasses

hoisted ashore. Whether in a Hansom cab

home to his family in lodgings in the town,

on the steam ferry to the rented villa

in the gated park on the Wirral,

or on the train to the rented house

on Southport’s Esplanade he felt too close

to the piratical-looking tars,

who washed up on the consulate steps.

 

His friend, Herman Melville – whose Moby Dick (tale

of arrogance and obsession) was published

in 1851 – had once been

a young sailor lost in the town’s quayside stews.

When he and his family did the Grand Tour

they set off from Liverpool, staying a week

with the Hawthornes in Southport. One evening

the writers took their cigars among the dunes

and, facing west across the twilight waves

of Liverpool Bay, spoke of providence,

eternity. Courageous innovators

that they were, no doubt each secretly,

that night, thought the other might have penned

the supreme fiction of their elusive land.

But the dark fields of the Republic

were rolling towards them – Little Bighorn

and Wounded Knee, Shiloh and Gettysburg.

 

 

 

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POETRY

SEAMUS HEANEY: A LIVERPOOL MEMORY

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments2 min read1.6K views

After the reading, we strolled down Brownlow Hill

for a Guinness and a chaser at The Vines

next to The Adelphi on Lime Street –

a Walker’s pub in Edwardian baroque.

The westering sun lit the stained glass windows.

 

We were both young men then. He had been married

the year before. I would be married

later that year. His first book had been published

by Faber and Karl Miller’s prescient review

seemed genuinely to bemuse and amuse him.

We talked of the city’s sectarian split –

the Orange annual march, with drums and fifes,

to Newsham Park, their annual outing

by train to Southport past the Scotland Road flats

festooned with green – curtains, tablecloths.

 

The University was generous

with expenses and paid for a taxi

to Speke.  He had a flight booked to Le Touquet

and a hire car there he would drive through the night

into Italy to join his wife.

He was so unostentatious, so

matter-of-fact, that such travel plans

seemed perfectly ordinary to someone

who had no licence and had only

been abroad on a school trip to San Malo!

 

As he got in the cab and we shook hands,

I knew I had met a particularly

memorable person – modest, kind

and witty – who happened also to be

especially, exceptionally talented.

 

When I opened The Door Into The Dark

some three years later and read ‘Night Drive’ –

 

The smells of ordinariness

Were new on the night drive through France;

Rain and hay and woods on the air

Made warm draughts in the open car.

 

Signposts whitened relentlessly.

Montrueil, Abbeville, Beauvais

Were promised, promised, came and went,

Each place granting its name’s fulfilment.

 

A combine groaning its way late

Bled seeds across its work-light.

A forest fire smouldered out.

One by one small cafés shut.

 

I thought of you continuously

A thousand miles south where Italy

Laid its loin to France on the darkened sphere.

Your ordinariness was renewed there.

 

– I knew I had been privileged and lucky

that summer evening to shake hands with

a compassionate genius, romantic,

urbane: a maker of exquisite art

out of the everyday.

 

 

 

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