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Selected and Edited Reviews of Enchantment
by David Morley
Jonathan Bate on Enchantment in the Sunday Telegraph Enchantment by
David Morley (Carcanet) is a linguistic feast that begins with a deeply moving sequence of elegies for the poet’s college
friend Nicholas Farrar Hughes.
Nisha Obano on Enchantment in Poetry Review
‘Morley’s poetry evokes with enormous skill and sensitivity the many ways in which ecological
changes affect our economic and social lives…Enchantment is a profound and tender work which confirms Morley’s
place at the helm of British poetry today’.
Julia Bird On Enchantment in Magma
Morley’s language is gorgeous, slubby
and dense, demanding a slow-paced reading and recitation. ‘Chorus’ is a patterned, refrain-rich poem for a newborn
– ‘The heron hangs its head before hurling down its guillotine. / The tern twists on tines of two sprung wings.
The dawn is the chorus’ – which is as much a lullaby as a powerful cradle spell. His tales are told strongly enough
to ‘draw readers into a lit circle’ even if the closest they get to a Gypsy campfire is a chalet at Centre Parcs.
If I had been anywhere near the shortlisting panels for last year’s poetry prizes, I would have nudged this collection
and its newly delivered worlds to the top of the pile.’
Matt Merritt on Enchantment in Polyolbion
Recent years have seen David Morley mining
a rich seam of inspiration from his Romany background – the results, in terms of both quality and quantity, have been
enough to make any poet envious. This latest volume shows no sign of a drop-off in either department.Enchantment does exactly what it says on the cover, fully living up to every sense of that
word. In the modern sense, it draws the reader in immediately, delights and intrigues, and doesn’t stop doing so until
you put it down. [...] I’ll be surprised, and disappointed,
if this book doesn’t end up in the running for one of the big awards this year, but regardless of whether or not it
does, it’s a superb piece of work. Read it.
Angela Topping on Enchantment in Ink, Sweat and Tears
I am with Orwell on the notion that good writing is like a pane of glass, and like
Keats in the pursuit of ‘negative capability’. Morley shows us beauty we can focus on, rather than us watching
him seeing the beauty. That is a mark of the truly great poet. [...]
Although this is a complex book in many ways,
and the third in a series, I find the poems have just the right amount of challenge for the reader. Morley is a quiet poet
whose work is to be savoured and mulled over, by a fireside on a winter’s night or swinging in a hammock in the midst
of the natural treasures which he interweaves throughout his work. Ever inventive, yet true to himself, Morley is a marvellous
poet.
Zoë
Brigley on Enchantment in Poetry Salzburg Review
In poems like
these, storytelling itself becomes a magical act, which enables solidarity and empathy.
Sue Hubbard on Enchantment in Poetry
London
In these strangely evocative poems where a blacksmith creates a girl from fire and a mother slides her fairy
baby into a waterfall, David Morley taps into myths and folklore to weave a series of spells reinventing the oral tradition
of poetry and returning it to fireside and hearth.
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