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Drawing on Romany language, storytelling and the speech of birds, award-winning poet David Morley offers a provocative and passionate invitation to reflect afresh on the ways in which the lives, stories and fate of humans – and the more than human – are twinned and entwined.
In poems that crackle with verbal energy, he invokes a world where God is Salieri to Nature’ s Mozart, in which hummingbirds hover like actors ‘ in a theatre of flowers’ , pipistrelles become piccolos, swans swerve comets, and a Zyzzyx wasp is ‘ a zugzwang of six legs and letters’ . There are exuberant celebrations of Romany language in the style of Edward Thomas; of how a Yellowhammer inspired Beethoven’ s Fifth Symphony; of the world-shaping discoveries of women scientists; and an autobiographical sequence, which roots this poet’ s authority and reflects on how power shapes what may be said in public.
