The Gypsy and the Poet

Overview

Inspired by a real-life encounter between the poet John Clare and a gypsy named Wisdom Smith, The Gypsy and the Poet is a sequence of sonnets about friendship and madness. In this exciting new collection, poet, critic, and teacher David Morley presents an imagined account of this meeting through poems infused with stories of Romani folklore and heritage.

Reviews

“Morley has not so much created a new universe as uncovered one . . . [he] brings Romany vocabulary fizzing and crackling into our consciousness.”  —Guardian

“Enchantment by David Morley is a linguistic feast.”  —Jonathan Bate, Sunday Telegraph

Author Biography

David Morley is the cofounder of the writing program in the department of English and comparative literary studies at the University of Warwick. He is the author of The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing and the poetry collections Enchantment, The Invisible Kings, and Scientific Papers. He has written for the Guardian and Poetry Review and is a recipient of the Templar Poetry Prize, an Arts Council of England Writers Award, an Eric Gregory Award, the Raymond Williams Prize, and a Hawthornden Fellowship.