Publisher's Synopsis
Read two sample poems for free - just click the Extracts tab above.The Night of the Day is remarkable for the skill and grace with which it travels through the difficult territories that map a journey from darkness towards light. In this movement from out of the shadows, it engages with tricks of the light, vanishings, illusions, magic and bitter realities, whilst using the terrain of language that each necessitates.
From the brutally austere language that depicts a child's experience of violence that opens this short collection, the poems move thematically into the natural world and the darting, shifting vocabularies of memory, friendship and loss. The Night of the Day keeps a solid and determined pace, which ultimately brings us under the canvas of the big top and into the lives of the travelling circus people, in their own words, their own voices, an undertow of threat and prejudice forever shadowing their footsteps on the road.
"The Night of the Day is an austere and sometimes bitter-sweet collection of poems finely wrought which tell of the experiences of men inhabiting the shadowy underside of the day."
Rose Davies, Sabotage Reviews
David Morley is a British poet, critic, anthologist, editor and scientist of partly Romani extraction. He has published eighteen books, including nine collections of poetry. His work has been translated into several languages including Arabic. His forthcoming collection from Carcanet will be titled Enchantment.
