Edwin Morgan
Edwin Morgan was a prominent Scottish poet and academic, born in 1920 in Glasgow, which played a significant role throughout his life. After serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II, he pursued higher education at the University of Glasgow, earning an M.A. in 1947. Morgan dedicated much of his career to the university, where he became a lecturer and later a professor of English, retiring in 1980. His literary work is diverse, encompassing a wide range of themes and styles, from concrete poetry to traditional forms, exploring subjects such as love, social issues, and satire. Notably, Morgan gained recognition for his experimental approach, influenced by contemporary movements, while also producing significant works like the Glasgow Sonnets, which focus on the city's marginalized communities. Throughout his career, he received numerous awards, including the Scottish Arts Council award and the Cholmondeley Award. In 2004, he was honored as Scotland's first poet laureate, known as "The Scots Makar," highlighting his vital contribution to Scottish literature. Morgan's poetry often reflected his deep connection to Scotland, utilizing its place and language to enrich his work.
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Edwin Morgan
Poet
- Born: April 27, 1920
- Birthplace: Glasgow, Scotland
- Died: August 17, 2010
- Place of death: Glasgow, Scotland
Biography
Edwin Morgan was born in 1920 in Glasgow, Scotland, the city which was central to his life. He was educated in Glasgow and attended the University of Glasgow. During World War II, he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps, but returned to Glasgow after the war and received an M.A. from the University in 1947, after which he served the University as lecturer, reader, and professor of English from 1947 until his retirement in 1980.
Morgan began writing fantasy fiction while he was in school, but in his university days he became attracted to contemporary poetry, and poetry (both his own and translations) made up most of his very large body of published work. Morgan’s work is notable for the great variety of his themes and modes. He wrote a substantial number of concrete poems in which the visual shape of the work on the page suggests its subject matter; he wrote a number of poems that exhibit his interest in sound (“The Loch Ness Monster’s Song,” for instance, is made up entirely of sounds the monster might make from deep in the loch). Such work has given him the reputation of “experimental” and suggests the depth of his interest in America’s Black Mountain poets; nevertheless, he has a substantial body of more conventional forms, with subjects ranging from love to social criticism to satire and parody.
Morgan said that he liked poems that rise from specific events of the sort that one might find in a news account, subjects that fit very well with his reputation for light verse, but works such as the Glasgow Sonnets, which look at his city’s poorest residents, are often cited as some of his most powerful writing. Morgan received a number of honorary degrees, prizes, and awards. He won the Scottish Arts Council award seven times between 1969 and 1991. He received the Cholmondeley Award in 1968 and the Royal Bank of Scotland Book of the Year Award in 1983; that same year, he was made Officer of the Order of the British Empire.
Scotland always furnished Morgan’s work with place and language, and in recognition of his cherished place in Scottish literature, in 2004, he was named Scotland’s first poet laureate with the title “The Scots Makar.” (The term makar comes from a traditional Scottish term for poet or “maker.”) That year he wrote a poem commemorating the opening of the new Scottish Parliament building, a building he praised in a lively combination of colloquial chat, Scottish dialect, and serious exhortation.