Esther Morgan's Grace- a review

Esther Morgan- Grace (Bloodaxe Books)

Esther Morgan’s TS Eliot prize shortlisted, Grace is a collection of epiphanies. They persuade us to ‘step into a moment’. Such moments are quiet glimpses of hauntingly still lives. Among Women is a poem about the annunciation; Morgan doesn’t explore the celebrated, but something not happening. Revelations are born from unheralded roles.

‘One evening I came home and everything was just as I’d left it/ except the bowls gleamed with a new knowledge…I shook out my life like a cloth/ and perhaps there is a purpose afterall in not being chosen.’

The poems scan clean rooms, often the domain of mothers and wives. What I loved most about the book is the domestic is never taken for granted. Sad wisdoms bless lonely kitchens with ‘cargos of white flowers.’ Everything hangs on doing the laundry, in the airing of spare rooms.

Enola Gay doesn’t excavate the life of the pilot, but his mother, who ‘irons away the long afternoons’ in a house of ‘blinding windows.’ Perceptions shift in the least public places. A woman moves her furniture around and the room and the furniture do not change, yet, ‘the permutations she has to work with do.’ (Shifting)

Morgan’s language graces the mundane with meaning, using religious imagery to stunning effect throughout the collection. Things Left Out All Night makes a nod to William Carlos Williams, the gravitas acquired by abandoned objects ends with ‘the wheelbarrow stood in long grass/ absolved by rain.’

There’s an evenness of tone in the collection, the pace rarely speeds. Slowing down is something a reader must adjust to. We don’t race into events, but consider interiors, inhabit the edge of things. It is a moving experience, in stillness we see small things and the impact is huge. ‘In the sun the shirts and summer dresses hang glittering/like the clothes of the baptised.’ (Summer Storm)

Poetry is a choice that isn’t always easy for a reader. These days, we are aware of the slim volume of a collection being more expensive than an e-book or a novel, yet, the nature of the writing here demanded that I could not put the book away as soon as I finished it. I read each poem again, slowly. I sat in stillness to let it sink in.

I kept the book in kitchen to pick up between domestic tasks when I had a minute. Such still moments of reflection are a gift. With the best poetry collections we know we will read them again and pick them up from time to time. Considering this, like this, poetry is not slim. There is nothing slight about it. And it’s a bargain. This was my favourite collection of last year.


Footnote: This is the first poetry review I've ever done, so forgive me if I missed something. I didn't know where to send it, but I read the book and just wanted to write it.