Edwin Morgan



Edwin George Morgan (27 April 1920 – 17 August 2010) was a Scottish poet and translator who was associated with the Scottish Renaissance. He is widely recognised as one of the foremost Scottish poets of the 20th century. In 1999, Morgan was made the first Glasgow Poet Laureate. In 2004, he was named as the first Scottish national poet: The Scots Makar.

Life and career
Morgan was born in Glasgow and grew up in Rutherglen. His parents were Presbyterian. As a child he was not surrounded by books, nor did he have any literary acquaintances. Schoolmates labelled him a swot. He convinced his parents to finance his membership of several book clubs in Glasgow. The Faber Book of Modern Verse (1936) was a "revelation" to him, he later said.

Morgan entered the University of Glasgow in 1937. It was at university that he studied French and Russian, while self-educating in "a good bit of Italian and German" as well. After interrupting his studies to serve in World War II as a non-combatant conscientious objector with the Royal Army Medical Corps, Morgan graduated in 1947 and became a lecturer at the University. He worked there until his retirement in 1980.

Morgan first outlined his sexuality in Nothing Not Giving Messages: Reflections on his Work and Life (1990). He had written many famous love poems, among them "Strawberries" and "The Unspoken", in which the love object was not gendered; this was partly because of legal problems at the time but also out of a desire to universalise them, as he made clear in an interview with Marshall Walker. At the opening of the Glasgow LGBT Centre in 1995, he read a poem he had written for the occasion, and presented it to the Centre as a gift.

In 2002, he became the patron of Our Story Scotland. At the Opening of the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh on 9 October 2004, Liz Lochhead read a poem written especially for the occasion by Morgan, titled "Poem for the Opening of the Scottish Parliament". She was announced as Morgan's successor as Scots Makar in January 2011.

Near the end of his life, Morgan reached a new audience after collaborating with the Scottish band Idlewild on their album The Remote Part. In the closing moments of the album's final track "In Remote Part/ Scottish Fiction", he recites a poem, "Scottish Fiction", written specifically for the song.

In 2007, Morgan contributed two poems to the compilation Ballads of the Book, for which a range of Scottish writers created poems to be made into songs by Scottish musicians. Morgan's songs "The Good Years" and "The Weight of Years" were performed by Karine Polwart and Idlewild respectively.

Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney "[paid] formal homage" during a 2005 visit.

In later life Morgan was cared for at a residential home as his illness worsened. He published a collection in April 2010 titled Dreams and Other Nightmares, months before his death, to mark his 90th birthday. Up until his death, he was the last survivor of the canonical 'Big Seven' (the others being Hugh MacDiarmid, Robert Garioch, Norman MacCaig, Iain Crichton Smith, George Mackay Brown, and Sorley MacLean).

On 17 August 2010, Edwin Morgan died of pneumonia in Glasgow, Scotland, at the age of 90 years. The Scottish Poetry Library made the announcement in the morning. Tributes came from, among others, politicians Alex Salmond and Iain Gray, as well as Carol Ann Duffy, the UK Poet Laureate.

Poetry
Morgan worked in a wide range of forms and styles, from the sonnet to concrete poetry. His Collected Poems appeared in 1990. He has also translated from a wide range of languages, including Russian, Hungarian, French, Italian, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Old English (Beowulf). Many of these are collected in ''Rites of Passage. Selected Translations'' (1976). His 1952 translation of Beowulf has become a standard translation in America.

Morgan was also influenced by the American beat poets, with their simple, accessible ideas and language being prominent features in his work.

In 1968 Morgan wrote a poem entitled Starlings In George Square. This poem could be read as a comment on society's reluctance to accept the integration of different races. Other people have also considered it to be about the Russian Revolution in which "Starling" could be a reference to "Stalin".

Other notable poems include:


 * The Death of Marilyn Monroe (1962) – an outpouring of emotion after the loss of one of the world's most talented women.
 * The Billy Boys (1968) – flashback of the gang warfare in Glasgow led by Billy Fullerton in the Thirties.
 * Glasgow 5 March 1971 – robbery by two youths by pushing an unsuspecting couple through a shop window on Sauchiehall Street
 * In the Snackbar – concise description of an encounter with a disabled pensioner in a Glasgow restaurant.
 * A Good Year for Death (26 September 1977) – a description of five famous people from the world of popular culture who died in 1977
 * Poem for the Opening of the Scottish Parliament – which was read by Liz Lochhead at the opening ceremony because he was too ill. (9 October 2004)

Publications

 * Beowulf: A Verse Translation into Modern English, Hand and Flower Press, 1952
 * The Vision of Cathkin Braes and Other Poems, William MacLellan, 1952
 * The Cape of Good Hope (limited edition), Pound Press, 1955
 * Starryveldt  Eugen Gomringer Press, 1965
 * Emergent Poems  Hansjörg Mayer, 1967
 * Gnomes  Akros publications, 1968
 * The Second Life  Edinburgh University Press, 1968
 * The Horseman's Word: Concrete Poems  Akros, 1970
 * Twelve Songs  Castlelaw Press, 1970
 * Glasgow Sonnets  Castlelaw Press, 1972
 * Instamatic Poems  Ian McKelvie, 1972
 * From Glasgow to Saturn  Carcanet, 1973
 * Nuspeak8: Being a Visual Poem by Edwin Morgan  Scottish Arts Council, 1973
 * The Whittrick: a Poem in Eight Dialogues  Akros, 1973

Prose

 * Essays  Carcanet, 1974

Translated

 * Poems from Eugenio Montale (translator), School of Art, University of Reading, 1959
 * Sovpoems: Brecht, Neruda, Pasternak, Tsvetayeva, Mayakovsky, Martynov, Yevtushenko  (translator)   Migrant Press, 1961
 * Selected Poems of Sándor Weöres and Selected Poems of Ferenc Juhász  (translator and introduction for Sándor Weöres)   Penguin, 1970
 * Wi the haill voice: 25 poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky  (translator and glossary)   Carcanet, 1972
 * Fifty Renascence Love-Poems  (translator)   Whiteknights Press, 1975
 * Rites of Passage  (translator), 1976

Edited

 * Collins Albatross Book of Longer Poems  (editor)   Collins, 1963


 * Edwin Morgan: an interview by Marshall Walker  Akros, 1977
 * The New Divan, 1977