They say language shows you, so my stories should show you
what worlds I’ve wound through, whose voices I’ve breathed in–
that smoke spooling from their mouths; the fire’s smoke
swirling above them makes an understood utterance, a ghost
of what we see, what we pass through and what might be watching
us watching ourselves waiting.

from ‘Spinning’

WITH DRAWINGS BY PETER BLEGVAD

A blacksmith creates a girl from fire. A hedgehog conquers a kingdom. How do you ride a Camargue horse through time? How do circus people live, when the glitterball has stopped turning? In these poem-stories David Morley reinvents the oral tradition of poetry as a form of magic, marvel and making. Opening with a celebration of friendship, the poems tell the world into being. In myths of origin and the natural world, the terrible chronicles of history and the saving power of folk wisdom, the poet weaves spells of Romany and circus language, invents forms and shapes, drawing his readers into a ‘lit circle’ magical and true.

Enchantment concludes a cycle of poems that began with David Morley’s celebrated Scientific Papers and The Invisible Kings.


From reviews of The Invisible Kings

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

Cover image: copyright © Peter Blegvad.

Contents

Fresh Water
The Lucy Poem
Chorus
Proserpina
Abandoned Christmas Tree Plantation

Hedgehurst
Taken Away
Romany Sarah
The Circling Game
Camargues

The Library Beneath the Harp
Nightingales
A Lit Circle
Spinning
Skeleton Bride

Notes