Book description
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 Â- 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 Â- 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. Â 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' Â- 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' Â- George Szirtes Â
Morgan works like an archaeologist, creating imagined histories of
lives by uncovering what was previously hidden' Â- Robyn Bolam, Magma
 Esther Morgan's poetry is wonderfully elegant, poignant and wise' Â-
Antony Dunn, Poetry London