The Haileybury Society is saddened to learn of the death of Gavin Richard Selerie (E 62) who ho has died on 18th June 2023, aged 73.

At Haileybury, Gavin was Fencing Captain (67); he was awarded an Open Scholarship to study English literature at Lincoln College, Oxford, and was awarded his degree in 1971. He undertook further research at Sussex University (1972) before studying Renaissance literature at the University of York (1973-77).

Lecturer in Creative Writing

Awarded an MPhil in English in 1978, Gavin went to become a lecturer in Creative Writing at the Centre for Extra-Mural Studies at Birkbeck College, where he remained until he retired in 2004.

Gavin was well-known for his poetry, with his salient works including Tom McGrath (1983); Azimuth (1984); Elizabethan Overhang (1989), Tilting Square (1992), Le Fanu’s Ghost (2006) and Hariot Double (2016).

Gavin also saw his work included in anthologies such as The New British Poetry (1988), Ten British Poets (1993) and the adventurous Reality Street Book of Sonnets (2008), which revealed the astonishing flexibility of the the sonnet form to poetic exlporation.

The Riverside Interviews

As well as his collaborative work with other writers such as Alan Halsey and David Annwn, Gavin is particularly well-known for his Riverside Interviews, which he undertook between 1979 and 1983.

In these, he conversed with other modernist and post-modernist poets and writers about their work and then documented the results. The interviews now form part of Gavin’s literary archive in the Lincoln College Archive Catalogue at Oxford, details of which can be found here.

(Image of Gavin courtesy of Guardian Website)