Gypsy and the Poet - Softcover

""Enchantment" by David Morley is a linguistic feast." --Jonathan Bate, "Sunday Telegraph" "Enchantment by David Morley is a linguistic feast." --Jonathan Bate, Sunday Telegraph "Morley has not so much created a new universe as uncovered one . . . [he] brings Romany vocabulary fizzing and crackling into our consciousness." --Guardian "Morley has not so much created a new universe as uncovered one . . . [he] brings Romany vocabulary fizzing and crackling into our consciousness." --"Guardian"

Beginning with the real-life encounter between the poet John Clare and a Gypsy named Wisdom Smith, David Morley reinvigorates the sonnet sequence to stage the fellowship that develops between the two men. We see the Gypsy and the poet banter, argue and teach each other lessons; work, love, and lose what they have loved. The central section of the book enacts Clare's own belief in the creative forms of nature itself: 'I found the poems in the fields / And only wrote them down'.