Cover

Description

ESTHER MORGAN
GRACE

Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize
Poetry Book Society Recommendation

What happens if, when the angel arrives with his message, no one’s at home? In poems of lyric concentration, Grace examines our need for purpose, for the signs that might help us decide what to do with our lives. It’s a desire that makes for restless spirits – like the woman who keeps shifting her furniture around or the invisible subjects of an early photograph, moving too fast to be captured.

Other poems ask what happens when we reconcile ourselves to watching and waiting – whether the angle of the sun in a guest room or the colour of a bruised clementine is really ‘enough to be going on with’. Haunted by a blue sky out of which something (or nothing) might come, these are poems of intensely felt moments. They create a vision both troubled and informed by doubt, where the ghost of a film star may be the closest we can come to grace.

‘Poems of outstanding beauty and a decidedly celebratory wisdom that takes nothing for granted. This is poetry of the first order by a poet who really knows how to sing’ – JOHN BURNSIDE

‘Esther Morgan’s poems are full of hints and mysteries. They dance on sensuous feet while keeping a troubled eye on the music that keeps them dancing. But there are joys here as well as anxieties, and it is the two that amplify each other into such clear, poignant and resonant shapes’ – GEORGE SZIRTES

‘Esther Morgan’s poetry is wonderfully elegant, poignant and wise’ – ANTONY DUNN, Poetry London

Cover painting: The Chair (2005) by John Vesty

ESTHER MORGAN

GRACE

Dedication

For Livia Elsie

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the following publications where some of these poems first appeared: The Best British Poetry 2011 (Salt Publishing, 2011), Did I Tell You? 131 Poems for Children in Need (Word Aid, 2010), Images of Women (Arrowhead Press, 2006), Ink, Sweat and Tears, In the Mix (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Magma, Poetry Review, Seam, Smiths Knoll and Spring (Gatehouse Press, 2009).

‘This Morning’ won the 2010 Bridport Prize, ‘Garbo Among Us’ won third prize in the 2010 Mslexia poetry competition while ‘Short-hold’ was shortlisted in the same competition. ‘The Dew Artist’ was shortlisted for the Larkin and East Riding Poetry Prize 2011.

In addition I’d like to thank the following whose advice and encouragement has been invaluable in helping to shape this collection: Martin Figura and Helen Ivory for organising our regular poetry get-togethers and the members of the group – Joanna Guthrie, Andrea Holland, Matthew Howard, Andrew McDonnell and Tom Warner; Polly Clark and all the great women poets on the Cove Park retreat, September 2010; Jo Emeney, Brian Johnstone, Esther Menon, Helen Oswald, Fiona Robyn, Sibyl Ruth, and Heidi Williamson. Thank you to my friends and family for their continuing support, and to my husband, Kelvyn, for the past and the future.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Grace

Among Women

This Year, Next Year, Sometime, Never

Epiphany