Grace

By Esther Morgan

Shortlisted for the 2011 TS 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 'Morgan works like an archaeologist, creating imagined histories of lives by uncovering what was previously hidden' -Robyn Bolam, Magma 'Esther Morgan's poetry is wonderfully elegant, poignant and wise' -Antony Dunn, Poetry London

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Oct 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781780370453

Esther Morgan

Esther Morgan was born in Kidderminster, Worcestershire. She first started writing poetry while working as a volunteer at the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere, Cumbria. After completing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in 1997, she taught on UEA’s undergraduate creative writing course and for the Department of Continuing Education. During her time at UEA Morgan edited four editions of the poetry anthology Reactions. As well as freelance teaching and editing she helped set up The Poetry Archive, the world’s largest online collection of poets reading their own work, working as the site’s Historic Recordings Manager for several years. She received an Eric Gregory Award in 1998, and her first collection, Beyond Calling Distance, was published by Bloodaxe in 2001. It won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was short-listed for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Her second collection, The Silence Living in Houses (Bloodaxe Books, 2005), was largely inspired by her time caretaking a run-down Edwardian house in Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. In 2010 she won the Bridport Poetry Prize for her poem ‘This Morning’, included in her third collection Grace (Bloodaxe Books, 2011), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Her fourth collection, The Wound Register, followed from Bloodaxe in 2018. After four years in Oxfordshire she moved back to Norfolk where she lives with her husband and daughter and currently works for Norfolk Museums Service.

Book preview

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

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),