David Morley Wins Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry

"David Morley, an ecologist who studied the impact of acid rain in the Lake District, has won the Ted Hughes award for New Work in Poetry," reports the Independent. Morley's £5,000 acknowledgement is specifically for his poetry collection The Invisible Gift: Selected Poems (Cacarnet).

Morley’s subjects range from Romani tales and political allegory to poetry which “evokes the enchantment and truth of the natural world and our place in it.”

A former research fellow at the Freshwater Biological Association who produces “slow poetry” sculptures within natural landscapes, Morley’s podcasts are among the top downloads on iTunes worldwide.

The judges said The Invisible Gift was “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.”

Read more at the Independent.