David Spittle is a poet, filmmaker and essayist. Spittle has published five poetry collections: How Eyes Rest (HVTN, 2025), Decomposing Robert (Black Herald Press, 2023), Rubbles (Broken Sleep Books, 2022), All Particles and Waves (Black Herald Press, 2020) and B O X (HVTN, 2018).
He runs an ongoing series of interviews with filmmakers and poets, the first volume was collected as Light Glyphs (Broken Sleep Books, 2021), featuring John Ashbery, Guy Maddin, Andrew Kötting, Iain Sinclair, So Mayer, Lisa Samuels and many others. A second volume, featuring Mark Jenkin, Vivienne Dick, Huw Wahl, Stephen Broomer and others is forthcoming.
Spittle's films have screened in festivals and been broadcast on the BBC. His debut feature documentary, Gift of the Gab (2026), is an eccentric portrait of the poet SJ Fowler. Spittle’s film criticism has appeared in Sight & Sound and as part of select Blu-ray releases. He continues independent research across film and philosophy.
Instagram: @david_spittle_
"Spittle's words tumble down from night branches straight into the reader's weltered bedclothes, each phrase a boggling surprise, darker and more astonishing than expected or feared, and hilarious even, until all a-dreaming are tucked in snug! So rich, so beautiful, one revelatory step after another."
Guy Maddin
“Almost every page here feels like a completely fresh negotiation of what a page can be, how variously language can be made to sit there and why should you stop at language anyway, since a page can contain almost any mark you might choose to invent for it. It’s a hilarious and alarming book.”
Peter Manson
“Spittle’s poems dig new tunnels between tongue, brain, hand, and eye.
I feel tuned inside their seeing”
Emily Skillings