David Morley’s selected Poems, The Invisible Gift (Carcanet) has been chosen as the latest winner of The Poetry Society’s prestigious prize, the Ted Hughes Award for 2015.

Known for his energy and linguistic inventiveness, poet David Morley writes about diverse and fascinating subjects, from Romani tales to sharply observed lyrics about nature, from political allegory to vividly imagined histories. His poetry evokes the enchantment and truth of the natural world and our place in it. The Invisible Gift, published by Carcanet, contains poems from previous collections and demonstrates the different impact and form a Selected Poems can achieve compared to the original individual collections.

Selected Poems can achieve compared to the original individual collections. The book won David Morley the 2015 £5,000 prize, which is funded by Carol Ann Duffy from her honorarium as Poet Laureate.

The judges Jackie Kay, Andrew McMillan and Ali Smith said of the work:

“The Invisible Gift is the perfect title for this collection, as it was simply a gift to read. Like opening a box of fireworks; something theatrical happens when you open its pages, and a curtain is raised on a tradition that has been overlooked. In these poems, David Morley switches forms and registers to reveal the versatility of the voices and the liveliness of the Romani culture, arguing for a tradition which has been invisible and silent. Ted Hughes wrote about the natural magical and mythical world; The Invisible Gift is a natural successor, as Morley has found a way to give a voice to the Romani people who live in that natural world. A lifetime’s work gathered into one Selected Poems, it becomes a cohesive new form in which old poems transform into something new.”

When accepting the prize, David Morley said:

“I always feel when I sit down to a write a poem, I have to relearn how to write a poem and when I write a book I’m learning how to do it for the first time. A Selected should be a survey of work, taken in chronological order. But I wanted to take that form of the book, and reinvent it so it feels fresh. I completely rewrote some of the poems, I reordered them, I left out some of my ‘darlings’. I wanted to recognise that a book like this can be a beginning, and a way of knowing yourself.”

AB 04/04/2016

For further details contact Alex Buxton:

Tel: 02476 150423

Mob: 07876 218166

a.buxton.1@warwick.ac.uk