Spencer Selby

Born and raised in the Midwest, poet and artist Spencer Selby studied political science and psychology at the University of Iowa. His experimental and visual poems are concerned with beauty, structure, and utility. Reviewing Selby’s poems for Slope, Amaranth Borsuk observed, “Their shifting ‘terrain of fabric’ is an open weave pierced with losses predicated by war and consumerism. … Selby’s language remains rich and elusive, twisting both toward and away from the reader in a complex montage.”

Selby is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Unknown Message (2018), Twist of Address (2007), Task (1999), and Instar (1989). He also wrote the nonfiction reference guide Dark City: The Film Noir (1984). His work has been included in the anthologies Word Score Utterance Choreography (1998), Primary Trouble: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (1996), and The Art of Practice: Forty-Five Contemporary Poets (1994).

Selby founded SINK Press in San Francisco in the early 1980s, organized the Canessa Park Reading Series from 1987 to 1993, and has served as coeditor of the visual poetry magazine Score. In 1993 he created The List of Experimental Poetry/Art Magazines. He lives in Oakland, California.