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Items tagged with: EdwinMorgan

Edwin Morgan died #OnThisDay, 19 August, 2010. “Riddle”, the final poem of Morgan’s final collection, 𝘋𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘖𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘕𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘴 (Mariscat, 2010), is a translation of one of the 10th-century Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book riddles, itself a translation of a Latin original by the poet Aldhelm (c639–709 CE)

#Scottish #literature #EdwinMorgan #poem #poetry #translation #riddle #AngloSaxon #medieval

Riddle by Edwin Morgan Up beyond the universe and back Down to the tiniest chigger in the finger – I outstrip the moon in brightness, I outrun midsummer suns. I embrace the seas and other waters, I am fresh and green as the fields I form. I walk under hell, I flow over the heavens. I am the land, I am the ocean. I claim this honour, I claim its worth. I am what I claim. What is my name?
Edwin Morgan, aged 89. Photo by Alex Boyd. Edwin Morgan’s head in profile, looking to the left. Morgan is smiling, alert, with short white hair and beard. He's wearing a checked shirt under a black cardigan which disappears into the black background of the photograph. Alex Boyd's initials – a tall, flat-topped capital A containing a smaller, slender capital B between its legs – are printed in the lower right-hand corner.
#translation #OnThisDay #literature #poetry #medieval #poem #scottish #riddle #anglosaxon #edwinmorgan

Bring back the wolf!
He’s not long gone, you know.
He went out when sheep came in.
Sheep cleared men and women.
Now let wolves clear sheep…

—Edwin Morgan, “Wolf”
in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet 2020)

A poem for International Wolf Day 🐺

carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer…

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #wolf #wolves #InternationalWolfDay #Scotland #rewilding #EdwinMorgan

from BEASTS OF SCOTLAND Wolf by Edwin Morgan Bring back the wolf! He’s not long gone, you know. He went out when sheep came in. Sheep cleared men and women. Now let wolves clear sheep. A little wildness please, a little howling to be heard from the chalets, a circling of yellow eyes at Aviemore. That legend much discredited, of the following of the sledges, let us test it in the Cairngorms, in the winter playgrounds with their merry cries, in the white paths through the forest. It would be good to get not a few scalps to crawl with fear when they hear that eerie arctic song as one by one the muzzles lift and open in the dark, and the dark is long.

Centenary Selected Poems

This is the third Selected Poems by Edwin Morgan from Carcanet, but the first since 2000 and the first to cover the full range of his poetry from his first c...
SupaduDev (Carcanet Press)
#literature #Scotland #poetry #wolf #wolves #poem #scottish #rewilding #internationalwolfday #edwinmorgan

#literature #poetry #snake #poem #snakes #WorldSnakeDay #scottish #edwinmorgan

Congratulations to the six poets shortlisted for the 2026 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award!

✨Tom Bailey
✨Emmett Coleman
✨Zainab Imran
✨Flora Leask Arizpe
✨Kate Millar
✨Caitlin Palmer

Find out more about the shortlist & read a selection of their poems on the Edwin Morgan Trust’s website:

edwinmorgantrust.com/2026/07/0…

#Scottish #literature #poetry #poets #EdwinMorgan

EMPA 2026: Shortlist

The Edwin Morgan Trust is delighted to announce the poets shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2026! Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2026 shortlist Tom Bailey for Bonaly Reservoir Tom Bailey is …
edwinmorgan (edwinmorgantrust.com)
#literature #poetry #poets #scottish #edwinmorgan

#science #geology #literature #Enlightenment #poetry #poem #robertburns #scottish #18thcentury #deeptime #20thcentury #sonnet #edwinmorgan

Power From Things Not Declared

Poet, novelist & translator Christopher Whyte in conversation with Michael Shaw, reflecting on queerness, Glasgow & poetry with Edwin Morgan as a central figure

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

edwinmorgantrust.com/2020/10/2…

#Scottish #literature #poetry #Glasgow #PrideMonth #LGBTQ #Queer #QueerLit #QueerWriters #EdwinMorgan

POWER FROM THINGS NOT DECLARED

Our October #HoldHandsAmongTheAtoms video release is a conversation between Christopher Whyte, poet, novelist and translator and Michael Shaw,  Lecturer in Scottish Literature, University of S…
edwinmorgan (edwinmorgantrust.com)
#LGBTQ #Queer #Glasgow #literature #poetry #pridemonth #scottish #QueerWriters #queerlit #edwinmorgan

…we turned it over, read easily One Pound,
but then the shock of Latin, like a gloss,
Respublica Scotorum, sent across
such ages as we guessed but never found…

—“‘The Coin’… slips infinite riches of cognitive possibility into the reader’s mental pockets”

6/14

thebottleimp.org.uk/2007/11/ne…

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EdwinMorgan #scifi #sciencefiction #timetravel

The Coin Edwin Morgan We brushed the dirt off, held it to the light. The obverse showed us Scotland, and the head of a red deer; the antler-glint had fled but the fine cut could still be felt. All right: we turned it over, read easily One Pound, but then the shock of Latin, like a gloss, Respublica Scotorum, sent across such ages as we guessed but never found at the worn edge where once the date had been and where as many fingers had gripped hard as hopes their silent race had lost or gained. The marshy scurf crept up to our machine, sucked at our boots. Yet nothing seemed ill-starred. And least of all the realm the coin contained.

New Currency or Old? - 'The Coin', by Edwin Morgan - The Bottle Imp

The Coin We brushed the dirt off, held it to the light. The obverse showed us Scotland, and the head of a red deer; the antler-glint had fled but the fine cut could still be felt.
pookaadmin (The Bottle Imp)
#scifi #literature #poetry #ScienceFiction #poem #timetravel #scottish #edwinmorgan

—We come in peace from the third planet.
Would you take us to your leader?

Edwin Morgan’s science-fiction poem “The First Men on Mercury” is presented here in comic-strip form, by the amazing metaphrog

5/14

Download it free here:

metaphrog.com/the-first-men-on…

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EdwinMorgan #scifi #sciencefiction #comics #comicstrip

The First Men on Mercury from a poem by Edwin Morgan Adaptation by metaphrog A shining rocket arcs through the starry sky. Three young human astronauts look through a porthole and point at a brown cratered planet. One points towards three tiny alien figures and a small, eccentric-looking robot who are watching them descend. No words are spoken.
The rocket lands. The aliens – two adults, one child – look on. The little robot skids back to the alien group. The three humans, in spacesuits, calmly descent from the rocket and approach the aliens. One human speaks: – We come in peace from the third planet. Would you take us to your leader? An alien replies: – Bawr stretter! Bawr. Bawr. Stretterhawl? The humans display a small orrery, and point to it. One says – This is a little plastic model of the solar system, with working parts. You are here and we are there and we are now here with you, is this clear? The aliens respond: – Gawl horrop. Bawr Abawrhannahanna! Patiently, the human continues: – Where we come from is blue and white with brown, you see we call the brown here ‘land’, the blue is ‘sea’, and the white is ‘clouds’ over land and sea, we live on the surface of the brown land, all round is sea and clouds…
The human continues: We are ‘men’. Men come – One alien interrupts: – Glawp men! Gawrbenner menko. Menhawl? One human, hand on their breast, replies earnestly: – Men come in peace from the third planet which we call ‘earth’. We are earthmen. Take us earthmen to your leader. The aliens and the robot look at the humans, their expressions unreadable. One alien replies: – Thmen? Thmen? Bawr. Bawrhossop. Yuleeda tan hanna. Harrabost yuleeda. The human raises their hands. Little spirals of confusion spin beside their head. They speak: – I am the yuleeda. You see my hands, we carry no benner, we come in peace. The spaceways are all stretterhawn. One alien replies: – Glawn peacemen all horrabhanna tantko! Tan come at’mstrossop. Glawp yuleeda! The human replies, as their two companions look on, startled: – Atoms are peacegawl in our harraban. Menbat worrabost from tan hannahanna. The two adult aliens flank their child, and point sternly at the humans, saying: – You men we know bawrhossoptant. Bawr. We know yuleeda. Go strawg backspetter quick.
The humans, with stars and bubbles drifting around their heads, reply: – We cantantabawr, tantingko backspetter now! One alien points forcefully. Behind them, the child clings to the other adult, who looks away, perhaps in sorrow. The first alien speaks: – Banghapper now! Yes, third planet back. Yuleeda will go back blue, white, brown nowhanna! There is no more talk. The humans, their rocket standing in the background, look defeated. One says: – Gawl han fasthapper? An alien reply comes from outside the frame: No. The first alien points up and away. The second embraces their child. The little robot points sternly, too, echoing the first alien's determined pose. The alien speaks: You must go back to your planet. Go back in peace, take what you have gained but quickly. Slowly, the humans turn back to their rocket, trailing bubbles from their heads. One says: Stretterworra Another says gawl, gawl… They climb back into their rocket, which flies away into space. Below, the aliens watch it leave. One says: Of course, but nothing is ever the same, now is it? The final, small, round panel shows the little brown planet disappearing int the distance. A speech bubble emerges from it: You’ll remember Mercury.

The First Men on Mercury comic by Edwin Morgan and Metaphrog

The First Men on Mercury comic adaptation of Edwin Morgan's poem by award-winning Metaphrog. Commissioned by the Association for Scottish Literary Studies.
Metaphrog (John Chalmers | Sandra Marrs)
#scifi #comics #literature #poetry #ScienceFiction #poem #comicstrip #scottish #edwinmorgan

In this podcast for the Edwin Morgan Trust, Ishbel McFarlane explores the personal & professional world that influenced Edwin Morgan – Scotland’s most influential poet of the last 50 years. Looking at LGBTQ+ history, language learning, translation, & more

4/14

edwinmorgantrust.com/2021/03/0…

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EdwinMorgan #LGBTQ #Glasgow #translation #podcast #language

Ishbel McFarlane – Edwin Morgan’s Second Life

A podcast about the life and context of Scottish poet and translator, Edwin Morgan, andwhat it means personally to a totally different artist.Taking his breakthrough poetry collection, The Second L…
edwinmorgan (edwinmorgantrust.com)
#podcast #LGBTQ #language #translation #Glasgow #literature #poetry #poem #scottish #edwinmorgan

But does every man feel like this at forty –
I mean it’s like Thomas Wolfe’s New York, his
heady light, the stunning plunging canyons, beauty…

—Morgan’s “The Second Life”, the title poem to his 1968 breakthrough collection, reflects changes in his own life, in Glasgow, in Scotland & the world

3/14

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EdwinMorgan #Glasgow

The Second Life Edwin Morgan But does every man feel like this at forty – I mean it’s like Thomas Wolfe’s New York, his heady light, the stunning plunging canyons, beauty – pale stars winking hazy downtown quitting-time, and the winter moon flooding the skyscrapers, northern – an aspiring place, glory of the bridges, foghorns are enormous messages, a looming mastery that lays its hand on the young man’s bowels until he feels in that air, that rising spirit all things are possible, he rises with it until he feels that he can never die – Can it be like this, and is this what it means in Glasgow now, writing as the aircraft roar over building sites, in this warm west light by the daffodil banks that were never so crowded and lavish – green May, and the slow great blocks rising under yellow tower cranes, concrete and glass and steel out of a dour rubble it was and barefoot children gone – Is it only the slow stirring, a city’s renewed life that stirs me, could it stir me so deeply as May, but could May have stirred what I feel of desire and strength like an arm saluting a sun? All January, all February the skaters enjoyed Bingham’s pond, the crisp cold evenings, they swung and flashed among car headlights, the drivers parked round the unlit pond to watch them, and give them light, what laughter and pleasure rose in the rare lulls of the yards-away stream of wheels along Great Western Road!
The ice broke up, but the boats came out. The painted boats are ready for pleasure. The long light needs no headlamps. Black oar cuts a glitter: it is heaven on earth. Is it true that we come alive not once, but many times? We are drawn back to the image of the seed in darkness, or the greying skin of the snake that hides a shining one – it will push that used-up matter off and even the film of the eye is sloughed – That the world may be the same and we are not and so the world is not the same, the second eye is making again this place, these waters and these towers they are rising again as the eye stands up to the sun, as the eye salutes the sun. Many things are unspoken in the life of a man, and with a place there is an unspoken love also in undercurrents, drifting, waiting its time. A great place and its people are not renewed lightly. The caked layers of grime grow warm, like homely coats. But yet they will be dislodged and men will still be warm. The old coats are discarded. The old ice is loosed. The old seeds are awake. Slip out of darkness, it is time.
#Glasgow #literature #poetry #poem #scottish #edwinmorgan

At ten I read Mayakovsky had died,
learned my first word of Russian, lyublyu…

—written for his 70th birthday, Edwin Morgan’s “Seven Decades” takes us through key moments in the poet’s life

in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2020)

2/14

scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/p…

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EdwinMorgan

Seven Decades Edwin Morgan At ten I read Mayakovsky had died, learned my first word of Russian, lyublyu; watched my English teacher poke his earwax with a well-chewed HB and get the class to join his easy mocking of my essay where I’d used verdant herbage for green grass. So he was right? So I hated him! And he was not really right, the ass. A writer knows what he needs, as came to pass. At twenty I got marching orders, kitbag, farewell to love, not arms, (though our sole arms were stretchers), a freezing Glentress winter where I was coaxing sticks at six to get a stove hot for the cooks, found myself picked quartermaster’s clerk – ‘this one seems a bit less gormless than the bloody others’ – did gas drill in the stinging tent, met Tam McSherry who farted at will a musical set. At thirty I thought life had passed me by, translated Beowulf for want of love. And one night stands in city centre lanes – they were dark in those days – were wild but bleak. Sydney Graham in London said, ‘you know I always thought so’, kissed me on the cheek. And I translated Rilke’s Loneliness is like a rain, and week after week after week strained to unbind myself, sweated to speak. At forty I woke up, saw it was day, found there was love, heard a new beat, heard Beats,
sent airmail solidarity to Saõ Paulo’s poetic-concrete revolution, knew Glasgow – what? – knew Glasgow new – somehow – new with me, with John, with cranes, diffusion of another concrete revolution, not bad, not good, but new. And new was no illusion: a spring of words, a sloughing, an ablution. At fifty I began to have bad dreams of Palestine, and saw bad things to come, began to write my long unwritten war. I was a hundred-handed Sindbad then, rolled and unrolled carpets of blood and love, raised tents of pain, made the dust into men and laid the dust with men. I supervised a thesis on Doughty, that great Englishman who brought all Arabia back in his hard pen. At sixty I was standing by a grave. The winds of Lanarkshire were loud and high. I knew what I had lost, what I had had. The East had schooled me about fate, but still it was the hardest time, oh more, it was the worst of times in self-reproach, the will that failed to act, the mass of good not done. Forgiveness must be like the springs that fill deserted furrows till they wait until – until – At seventy I thought I had come through, like parting a bead curtain in Port Said, to something that was shadowy before, figures and voices of late times that might be surprising yet. The beads clash faintly behind me as I go forward. No candle-light please, keep that for Europe. Switch the whole thing right on. When I go in I want it bright, I want to catch whatever is there in full sight.

Seven Decades

At forty I woke up, saw it was day, found there was love, heard a new beat, heard Beats, sent airmail solidarity to Saõ Paulo’s poetic-concrete revolution
Scottish Poetry Library
#literature #poetry #poem #scottish #edwinmorgan

Push the boat out, compañeros,
push the boat out, whatever the sea…

—Edwin Morgan, “At Eighty”: a poem written for his own 80th birthday

Edwin Morgan (1920–2010) was born #OTD, 27 April – a 🎂 🧵

1/14

scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/p…

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EdwinMorgan #birthday #80thbirthday

At Eighty by Edwin Morgan Push the boat out, compañeros, push the boat out, whatever the sea. Who says we cannot guide ourselves through the boiling reefs, black as they are, the enemy of us all makes sure of it! Mariners, keep good watch always for that last passage of blue water we have heard of and long to reach (no matter if we cannot, no matter!) in our eighty-year-old timbers leaky and patched as they are but sweet well seasoned with the scent of woods long perished, serviceable still in unarrested pungency of salt and blistering sunlight. Out, push it all out into the unknown! Unknown is best, it beckons best, like distant ships in mist, or bells clanging ruthless from stormy buoys.

At Eighty

Push the boat out, compañeros, push the boat out, whatever the sea. Who says we cannot guide ourselves through the boiling reefs, black as they are, the enemy of us all makes sure of it!
Scottish Poetry Library
#birthday #OTD #literature #poetry #poem #scottish #edwinmorgan #80thbirthday

When you go,
if you go,
and I should want to die,
there’s nothing I’d be saved by
more than the time
you fell asleep in my arms…

—Edwin Morgan, “When You Go”
published in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2020)

carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer…

#Scottish #literature #ValentinesDay #LGBTQ #LGBTQplusHM #poem #poetry #Valentine #lovepoem #lovepoetry #EdwinMorgan

When you go Edwin Morgan When you go, if you go, and I should want to die, there's nothing I’d be saved by more than the time you fell asleep in my arms in a trust so gentle I let the darkening room drink up the evening, till rest, or the new rain lightly roused you awake. I asked if you heard the rain in your dream and half dreaming still you only said, I love you.

Centenary Selected Poems

This is the third Selected Poems by Edwin Morgan from Carcanet, but the first since 2000 and the first to cover the full range of his poetry from his first c...
SupaduDev (Carcanet Press)
#LGBTQ #literature #poetry #valentine #poem #valentinesday #scottish #lovepoetry #lovepoem #edwinmorgan #lgbtqplushm

Coming up Buchanan Street, quickly, on a sharp winter evening
a young man and two girls, under the Christmas lights –
The young man carries a new guitar in his arms,
the girl on the inside carries a very young baby,
and the girl on the outside carries a chihuahua…

—Edwin Morgan, “Trio”
published in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2020)

carcanet.co.uk/9781784109967/c…

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Glasgow #Christmas #BuchananStreet #EdwinMorgan

Trio by Edwin Morgan Coming up Buchanan Street, quickly, on a sharp winter evening a young man and two girls, under the Christmas lights – The young man carries a new guitar in his arms, the girl on the inside carries a very young baby, and the girl on the outside carries a chihuahua. And the three of them are laughing, their breath rises in a cloud of happiness, and as they pass the boy says, “Wait till he sees this but!” The chihuahua has a tiny Royal Stewart tartan coat like a teapot-holder, the baby in its white shawl is all bright eyes and mouth like favours in a fresh sweet cake, the guitar swells out under its milky plastic cover, tied at the neck with silver tinsel tape and a brisk sprig of mistletoe. Orphean sprig! Melting baby! Warm chihuahua! The vale of tears is powerless before you. Whether Christ is born, or is not born, you put paid to fate, it abdicates under the Christmas lights. Monsters of the year go blank, are scattered back, can’t bear this march of three. – And the three have passed, vanished in the crowd (yet not vanished, for in their arms they wind the life of men and beasts, and music, laughter ringing them round like a guard) at the end of this winter’s day.

Book Details - Carcanet Press

This is the third Selected Poems by Edwin Morgan from Carcanet, but the first since 2000 and the first to cover the full range of his poetry from his first c...
Carcanet Press
#christmas #Glasgow #literature #poetry #poem #scottish #buchananstreet #edwinmorgan

#computer #christmas #literature #poetry #concretepoetry #poem #scottish #christmascard #20thcentury #edwinmorgan

A poem by Edwin Morgan inscribed into a flagstone on Candleriggs in Glasgow, just outside the City Halls. Born in 1920, Morgan became the city's first poet laureate in 1999. This particular poem is an alternative take on the well-known rhyme about the Glasgow Coat of Arms.

#glasgow #streetart #poetry #edwinmorgan #glasgowcoatofarms #streetpoetry

A poem inscribed on a flagstone in a Glasgow street. It reads: Praise for the tree that growled but grew, praise for the birds that fainted but flew, praise for the bell thay rusted by rang, praise for the fish that sighed by swam.
#Glasgow #poetry #StreetArt #streetpoetry #glasgowcoatofarms #edwinmorgan

“The use of Scots, apart from the relative ease of working up the right atmosphere, also helps (though dangerously) because of the verbal freedom it confers on a harassed translator”

—Edwin Morgan on translating Mayakovsky into Scots

1/3

asls.org.uk/publications/books…

#Scottish #literature #poetry #translation #InternationalTranslationDay #Scots #Scotslanguage #Russian #EdwinMorgan #Mayakovsky

Annual Volume 48 (2018) - Association for Scottish Literature

Edited by John Coyle and James McGonigal Paperback, 424 pages ASLS, April 2020 Price £24.95 ISBN 978-1-906841-40-9 Order from our bookshop “I try to write…
Association for Scottish Literature
#russian #translation #literature #poetry #scots #scottish #scotslanguage #internationaltranslationday #Mayakovsky #edwinmorgan

#literature #poetry #concretepoetry #snake #poem #snakes #WorldSnakeDay #scottish #edwinmorgan

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