Carcanet Press - The Gypsy and the Poet

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Excerpt
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Contents
Awards
Reviews

‘Do you ever tell lies, Wisdom?’ ‘All the long day through, brother,’

laughs the Gypsy. He lights his long pipe beneath his hat’s brim.

‘But the brassest of lies’ – the Gypsy plucks – ‘are like this heather:

a charm against visible harm and’ – he crushes it – ‘invisible harm.’

And the friends look at each other across the invisible stage of grass.

from ‘The Act’

Beginning with the real-life encounter between the poet John Clare and a Gypsy named Wisdom Smith, David Morley reinvigorates the sonnet sequence to stage the fellowship that develops between the two men. We see the Gypsy and the poet banter, argue and teach each other lessons; work, love, and lose what they have loved. The central section of the book enacts Clare’s own belief in the creative forms of nature itself: ‘I found the poems in the fields / And only wrote them down’.

The Invisible Gift

The Gypsy

Wisdom Smith Pitches his Bender on Emmonsales Heath, 1819

The Ditch

John Clare’s Notes

Magpies

A Walk

The Gamekeeper

Fortune

The Gypsy’s Evening Blaze

The Magic Stone

Wisdom Smith Shows John Clare the Right Notes and the Wrong

First Love

Mad

English

The Invisible Fair

Rime

The Hedgehog

Second Love

A Spring Wife

Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery

A Steeple-Climber

A Picture of Eternity Drawn in Crayons

Wisdom Smith Shakes John Clare’s Hand

A Prayer

World's Eye

The Boy and the Wren

On Not Rushing at Waterfalls

Fugitive

& Son

Hawker

Leaf Letters

Barden Tower

Pipping

A Butterfly Emerges from the Poems of E.B.

Fruit Fly

Fight

Ballad of the Moon, Moon

Pallid Swift

Foxes, Swans, Starlings

Marriage Vows of a Rom to a Gadji

Sessile and Strid

The Poet

The Pen

An Olive-Green Coat

Bender

My Children

Worlds

The Spared

Hedge-layers

The Souls

Lapwings

Hunters

A Bivouac

Lime-burners

The Ring

Last Love

A Flitting

Blea

Tenant of Leaves & Flowers & Glossy Stalks

Woodsmanship

King of Cormorants

The Friend of All Friends

Harebells

The Strayed

The Act

The Gypsy and the Poet

Notes

David Morley is a poet and ecologist. He won the Ted Hughes Award for The Invisible Gift: Selected Poems, the judges commenting, ‘Ted Hughes wrote about the natural magical and mythical world; The Invisible Gift is a natural successor’. His Carcanet collections include The Magic of What’s There, The ... read more

Awards won by David Morley Short-listed, 2020 The Forward Prize for Best Collection (FURY) Winner, 2015 Poetry Society Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry (The Invisible Gift )

'A rare and beautiful book.'
The Guardian on The Invisible Kings (2007) 'Here are two outsiders working at poetry from the underside of nature, Clare now in a brown huff, Wisdom snaring a warren with a snigger of wires. Using a mixture of sonnets, Romani language, concrete poetry, and the dynamics of birdsong, Morley conjures a marvellous sense of nature as intimacy, something precise yet loaded and of immense importance to us.'
George Szirtes Praise for David Morley 'A linguistic playground full of marvels'

D.A. Prince, Under the Radar

'A rich and musical collection with a sharp political bite... there's something magical about reading the poems first for the sheer verbal play of the language, the sparking, luminous sounds it makes in the mouth and paints on the mind... FURY has an enormous range, and handles its politics with sensitivity and power'

Seán Hewitt, The Irish Times

'David Morley's FURY is published by Carcanet. Sonnets meet pantoums in this festival of loves and voices, the air is full of birds, fury meets gentleness, and every poem is deeply interested in what language makes of us... FURY controls its furies with ever inventive craftsmanship.'

Alexandra Harris, Chair of Judges, The Forward Prize

'...poems which all possess such showmanship and sonic agility... Morley's poetics of mimicry and ventriloquism echo the collection's subjects of displaced peoples and species, illustrating the virtuosity of voice, in a mutually reinforcing loop.'

The Poetry Review

'Morley's mastery of poetics comes into full effect as he introduces more and more Romany words in his poems... Morley connects us simultaneously to the past and the present, to our world and the natural world. An ecologist and naturalist, David Morley's attention to the natural world is particular and more acute than most... David Morley's Fury is an exhibition of poetic prowess and skilful storytelling that extends his interests in the legacy of Gypsy people from his previous collections. Readers can expect to be treated to a force of nature in poetics, linguistic dexterity and storytelling.'

H.M. Hussain, DURA Dundee

'In FURY, Morley's concerns combine as never before into a keening, politicised call to pay attention to the missing, the lost, and the deliberately elided [...] Morley's trademark fusion of Romani and English "Angloromani" forges afresh his lyric gifts'

Sinead Morrissey, PBS Autumn Bulletin

'The poems of FURY are acts of radical connection across cultures and language... FURY comes with a hard political edge too, in elegies for cultural loss: "All the nameless people named here. / The story ends with who we were."'

Aingeal Clare, The Guardian

'In this daring new collection, Morley holds a mirror up to the myriad of irresponsible ways that we as humans influence the natural world and how we treat one another... Threaded with Romanes - as Morley's poems often are - this is a celebration of the Roma tongue as well as the people and places gone by... To read Fury is to tread a pilgrimage along the oldest putèka. To know these paths is to be compelled to walk them again, to feel the trembling pride for our ethnicity and to sing once more of home.'

Jo Clement, Travellers Times

'Exuberant, linguistically experimental poems... his work has affinities with Hughes's attention to both the surfaces and depths of the natural world.'
Jeff Gundy, Poetry Salzburg Review
'David Morley can work in more than one mode... no subject is off limits here'
Harry Cochrane, TLS
'Morley is a master of the integrity of wholes and parts. A fabulous collection of poems...'
Dundee University Review of the Arts

'Like opening a box of fireworks, something theatrical happens when you open its pages ... Ted Hughes wrote about the natural, magical, and mythical world; The Invisible Gift is a natural successor.'
Ali Smith, Andrew McMillan & Jackie Kay, Ted Hughes Award judges.
'David Morley takes us on a voyage to the other half of his heritage. In a serial masterpiece of macaronic verse, he shows us a life intimate with our own...yet more deeply Other than romantic fairytales or even authentic music from Spain and Eastern Europe had suggested it might be. He holds our world up to a language mostly kept secret up to now...the refraction of the familiar is dizzying yet often moving.'
Les Murray
'T'he strange atmospherics suffuse every page while the balance struck between mystery and disclosure can be breathtaking...Such moments led me to feel that Morley had not so much created a new universe as uncovered one. Any universe is bound together by language; and Morley brings Romany vocabulary fizzing and crackling into our consciousness'
Tim Liardet, Guardian 'Enchantment by David Morley is a linguistic feast...'
Jonathan Bate Sunday Telegraph Books Of The Year 2010

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The Gypsy and the Poet David Morley 10% off eBook (EPUB) Categories: 21st Century, Art, British Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (78 pages) (Pub. Aug 2013) 9781847771247 Out of Stock eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE! (Pub. Aug 2013) 9781847772725 £9.95 £8.96 To use the EPUB version, you will need to have Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) installed on your device. You can find out more at https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions.html. Please do not purchase this version if you do not have and are not prepared to install, Adobe Digital Editions. Description Excerpt Author Contents Awards Reviews ‘Do you ever tell lies, Wisdom?’ ‘All the long day through, brother,’ laughs the Gypsy. He lights his long pipe beneath his hat’s brim. ‘But the brassest of lies’ – the Gypsy plucks – ‘are like this heather: a charm against visible harm and’ – he crushes it – ‘invisible harm.’ And the friends look at each other across the invisible stage of grass. from ‘The Act’ Beginning with the real-life encounter between the poet John Clare and a Gypsy named Wisdom Smith, David Morley reinvigorates the sonnet sequence to stage the fellowship that develops between the two men. We see the Gypsy and the poet banter, argue and teach each other lessons; work, love, and lose what they have loved. The central section of the book enacts Clare’s own belief in the creative forms of nature itself: ‘I found the poems in the fields / And only wrote them down’. The Invisible Gift The Gypsy Wisdom Smith Pitches his Bender on Emmonsales Heath, 1819 The Ditch John Clare’s Notes Magpies A Walk The Gamekeeper Fortune The Gypsy’s Evening Blaze The Magic Stone Wisdom Smith Shows John Clare the Right Notes and the Wrong First Love Mad English The Invisible Fair Rime The Hedgehog Second Love A Spring Wife Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery A Steeple-Climber A Picture of Eternity Drawn in Crayons Wisdom Smith Shakes John Clare’s Hand A Prayer World's Eye The Boy and the Wren On Not Rushing at Waterfalls Fugitive & Son Hawker Leaf Letters Barden Tower Pipping A Butterfly Emerges from the Poems of E.B. Fruit Fly Fight Ballad of the Moon, Moon Pallid Swift Foxes, Swans, Starlings Marriage Vows of a Rom to a Gadji Sessile and Strid The Poet The Pen An Olive-Green Coat Bender My Children Worlds The Spared Hedge-layers The Souls Lapwings Hunters A Bivouac Lime-burners The Ring Last Love A Flitting Blea Tenant of Leaves & Flowers & Glossy Stalks Woodsmanship King of Cormorants The Friend of All Friends Harebells The Strayed The Act The Gypsy and the Poet Notes David Morley is a poet and ecologist. He won the Ted Hughes Award for The Invisible Gift: Selected Poems, the judges commenting, ‘Ted Hughes wrote about the natural magical and mythical world; The Invisible Gift is a natural successor’. His Carcanet collections include The Magic of What’s There, The ... read more Awards won by David Morley Short-listed, 2020 The Forward Prize for Best Collection (FURY) Winner, 2015 Poetry Society Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry (The Invisible Gift ) 'A rare and beautiful book.' The Guardian on The Invisible Kings (2007) 'Here are two outsiders working at poetry from the underside of nature, Clare now in a brown huff, Wisdom snaring a warren with a snigger of wires. Using a mixture of sonnets, Romani language, concrete poetry, and the dynamics of birdsong, Morley conjures a marvellous sense of nature as intimacy, something precise yet loaded and of immense importance to us.' George Szirtes Praise for David Morley 'A linguistic playground full of marvels' D.A. Prince, Under the Radar 'A rich and musical collection with a sharp political bite... there's something magical about reading the poems first for the sheer verbal play of the language, the sparking, luminous sounds it makes in the mouth and paints on the mind... FURY has an enormous range, and handles its politics with sensitivity and power' Seán Hewitt, The Irish Times 'David Morley's FURY is published by Carcanet. Sonnets meet pantoums in this festival of loves and voices, the air is full of birds, fury meets gentleness, and every poem is deeply interested in what language makes of us... FURY controls its furies with ever inventive craftsmanship.' Alexandra Harris, Chair of Judges, The Forward Prize '...poems which all possess such showmanship and sonic agility... Morley's poetics of mimicry and ventriloquism echo the collection's subjects of displaced peoples and species, illustrating the virtuosity of voice, in a mutually reinforcing loop.' *The Poetry Review* 'Morley's mastery of poetics comes into full effect as he introduces more and more Romany words in his poems... Morley connects us simultaneously to the past and the present, to our world and the natural world. An ecologist and naturalist, David Morley's attention to the natural world is particular and more acute than most... David Morley's Fury is an exhibition of poetic prowess and skilful storytelling that extends his interests in the legacy of Gypsy people from his previous collections. Readers can expect to be treated to a force of nature in poetics, linguistic dexterity and storytelling.' H.M. Hussain, DURA Dundee 'In FURY, Morley's concerns combine as never before into a keening, politicised call to pay attention to the missing, the lost, and the deliberately elided [...] Morley's trademark fusion of Romani and English "Angloromani" forges afresh his lyric gifts' Sinead Morrissey, PBS Autumn Bulletin 'The poems of FURY are acts of radical connection across cultures and language... FURY comes with a hard political edge too, in elegies for cultural loss: "All the nameless people named here. / The story ends with who we were."' Aingeal Clare, The Guardian 'In this daring new collection, Morley holds a mirror up to the myriad of irresponsible ways that we as humans influence the natural world and how we treat one another... Threaded with Romanes - as Morley's poems often are - this is a celebration of the Roma tongue as well as the people and places gone by... To read Fury is to tread a pilgrimage along the oldest putèka. To know these paths is to be compelled to walk them again, to feel the trembling pride for our ethnicity and to sing once more of home.' Jo Clement, Travellers Times 'Exuberant, linguistically experimental poems... his work has affinities with Hughes's attention to both the surfaces and depths of the natural world.' Jeff Gundy, Poetry Salzburg Review 'David Morley can work in more than one mode... no subject is off limits here' Harry Cochrane, TLS 'Morley is a master of the integrity of wholes and parts. A fabulous collection of poems...' Dundee University Review of the Arts 'Like opening a box of fireworks, something theatrical happens when you open its pages ... Ted Hughes wrote about the natural, magical, and mythical world; The Invisible Gift is a natural successor.' Ali Smith, Andrew McMillan & Jackie Kay, Ted Hughes Award judges. 'David Morley takes us on a voyage to the other half of his heritage. In a serial masterpiece of macaronic verse, he shows us a life intimate with our own...yet more deeply Other than romantic fairytales or even authentic music from Spain and Eastern Europe had suggested it might be. He holds our world up to a language mostly kept secret up to now...the refraction of the familiar is dizzying yet often moving.' Les Murray 'T'he strange atmospherics suffuse every page while the balance struck between mystery and disclosure can be breathtaking...Such moments led me to feel that Morley had not so much created a new universe as uncovered one. Any universe is bound together by language; and Morley brings Romany vocabulary fizzing and crackling into our consciousness' Tim Liardet, Guardian 'Enchantment by David Morley is a linguistic feast...' Jonathan Bate Sunday Telegraph Books Of The Year 2010 You might also be interested in: By Himself John Clare, Edited by Eric Robinson The Shepherd's Calendar John Clare, Edited by Tim Chilcott	Share this... Quick Links Carcanet Poetry Carcanet Classics Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Lives and Letters PN Review Video Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! The Carcanet Blog We've Moved! read more Books of the Year read more One Little Room: Peter McDonald read more Collected Poems: Mimi Khalvati read more Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn read more Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more
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