Edwin Morgan

Edwin Morgan (1920-2010) at 89. Photo by Alex Boyd. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Edwin Morgan
Influences Laura Riding, Hart Crane, Faber Book of Modern Verse (1936 edition), Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Vladimir Mayakovsky, the Gawain poet, John Milton, the metaphysicals, concrete poetry, beat poetry, sonnets, foreign texts, French symbolism, Russian modernism.
Influenced Robert Crawford, A.L. Kennedy, W.N. Herbert, Richard Price, Irvine Welsh, James Kelman and Informationist poetry.

Edwin George Morgan FRSE OBE (27 April 1920 - 17 August 2010) was a Scottish poet translator, and academic, who is widely recognized as a foremost Scottish poet of the 20th century.

Life

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.

Career

After graduation, Morgan became a lecturer at the University of Glasgow, and worked there until his retirement in 1980.

Morgan 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.

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

In 2007, Morgan contributed 2 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.

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

Writing

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 5 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)

Recognition

In 1999, Morgan was made Glasgow's inaugural Poet Laureate.

In 2004, he was named as the 1st Scottish national poet, the Scots Makar.

Awards

In Remote Part-Scottish Fiction

• 1972 PEN Memorial Medal (Hungary)
• 1982 Order of the British Empire
• 1983 Scottish Book of the Year Award for Poems of Thirty Years
• 1985 Soros Translation Award (New York)
• 1998 Stakis Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year for Virtual and Other Realities
• 2000 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry
• 2001 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for Jean Racine: Phaedra
• 2003 Jackie Forster Memorial Award for Culture
• 2007 T S. Eliot Prize for A Book of Lives.
• 2008 Scottish Book of the Year Award

In popular culture

Near the end of his life, Morgan reached a new audience after collaborating with Scottish band Idlewild on their album The Remote Part (2002). 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.

Publications

Poetry

• starryveldt. Frauenfeld, Switzerland: Eugen Gomringer Press, 1965.
• emergent poems. Stuttgart, Germany: Hansjörg Mayer, 1967.
• gnomes. Preston, UK: Akros Publications, 1968.
• The Second Life. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968.
• Penguin Modern Poets 15 (by Alan Bold, Edward Brathwaite, & Edwin Morgan). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1969.
• The Horseman's Word: A Sequence of Concrete Poems. Preston, UK: Akros Publications, 1970.
• Twelve Songs. West Linton, UK: The Castlelaw Press, 1970.
• Instamatic Poems. London: Ian McKelvie, 1972.
• nuspeak 8. being a visual poem by edwin morgan. Glasgow: Glasgow Centre, Scottish Arts Council, 1973.
• The New Divan. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1977.
• Poems of Thirty Years. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1982.
• Grafts/Takes. Glasgow: Mariscat Press, 1983.
• Sonnets from Scotland. Glasgow: Mariscat Press, 1984.
• Selected Poems. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1985.
• Newspoems. London: wacy!, 1987.
• Tales from Limerick Zoo. Glasgow: Mariscat Press, 1988.
• Themes on a Variation. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1988.
• Collected Poems. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1990.
• Nothing Not Giving Messages (edited by Hamish Whyte). Edinburgh: Polygon, 1990.
• Hold Hands Among the Atoms. 70 Poems. Glasgow: Mariscat Press, 1991.
• Sweeping Out the Dark. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1994.
• Virtual and Other Realities. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1997.
• "Planet Wave", in: PN Review 119, 24:1 (Jan. - Feb. 1998).
• Demon. Glasgow: Mariscat Press, 1999.
• New Selected Poems. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 2000.
• Cathures. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 2002.
• Love and a Life. 50 Poems by Edwin Morgan. Glasgow: Mariscat Press, 2003.
• Tales From Baron Munchausen. 12 Poems by Edwin Morgan. Edinburgh: Mariscat Press, 2004.
• Thirteen Ways of Looking at Rillie. London: Enitharmon Press, 2006
• A Book of Lives. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 2007.
• Beyond The Sun. Edinburgh: Luath Press Ltd., 2007.
• From Saturn to Glasgow. Edinburgh: Scottish Poetry Library, 2008.

Plays

• A.D. A Trilogy of Plays on the Life of Jesus Christ. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 2000.
• The Play of Gilgamesh. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 2005.

Non-fiction

• Essays. Cheadle Hulme, Cheadle: Carcanet Press, 1974.
• Hugh MacDiarmid (edited by Ian Scott-Kilvert). London: Longman (published for The British Arts Council), 1976.
• Crossing the Border. Essays on Scottish Literature. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1990.
• Long Poems - But How Long? W.D. Thomas Memorial Lecture. Delivered at the University of Walses Swansea on 27 November 1995 by Professor Edwin Morgan. University of Wales Swansea, 1995.
• "Scotland and the World", in: Chapman, 95 (2000), 2-15.

Translated

• Beowulf. A verse translation into Modern English. Aldington, Kent, UK: Hand & Flower Press, 1952; Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967.
  • Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 2002.
• Rites of Passage. Selected translations. Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1976.
• Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. A new verse translation by Edwin Morgan. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1992.
• Cecilia Vicuña, PALABRARmas / WURDWAPPINschaw. Edinburgh: Morning Star Publications, 1994.
• Collected Translations. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1996.
• St. Columba. The Maker on high. Glasgow: Mariscat Press, 1997.
• Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus: In a new version by Edwin Morgan. Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 1999.
• Jean Racine. Phaedra , Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2000.
• The Battle of Bannockburn. Edinburgh: SPL in association with Akros Publications and Mariscat Press, 2004.
• Attila József, Sixty Poems translated by Edwin Morgan. Glasgow: Mariscat Press, 2001.

Edwin Morgan - "Strawberries"

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy EdwinMorgan.com.

See also

• Translators of Beowulf
• List of British poets
• Timeline of British poetry

External links

Poems

• "Strawberries",  The Guardian
• Edwin Morgan 1920-2010 at the Poetry Foundation
• Edwin Morgan (1920-2010) at the Scottish Poetry Library
• Poem Pool
• Edwin Morgan at PoemHunter (8 poems)

Audio / video

• Edwin Morgan (1920-2010) at The Poetry Archive
• Edwin Morgan at YouTube

Books

• Edwin Morgan at Amazon.com

About

• Edwin Morgan at Modern Scottish Writers
• "Edwin Morgan, Scotland's National Poet, dies aged 90", The Guardian
• BBC Two: Writing Scotland biography and bibliography
• Edwin Morgan Official website
• "Virtuoso: The poetry of Edwin Morgan (1920-2010) at WriteWords
• "'How Shall the Race Be Served?' The life of Edward Morgan" by D.M. Black, Darkhorse magazine (.PDF)