Scottish Poetry Library: New Website and Shop! >>> Edwin Morgan T-Shirt [more]

Supper and Sonnets at Six Thursday 16 February from 6-9pm. [more]

2012: The fifth Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition [more]

EDWIN MORGAN’S SHIRT POEM [more]

The Bottle Imp - The Milk of Space by Hamish Whyte [more]

The Scots Makar • A Tribute to Edwin Morgan • Wednesday 3 November 2010, 7:45pm [more]

Gilgamesh at RSAMD - Tue 02/11/10 To Sat 06/11/10 - What lasts, what changes, what survives? Is anything immortal? [more]

Beyond the Last Dragon: A Life of Edwin Morgan • James McGonigal [more]

 

 

SPL

Edwin Morgan T-Shirt

SCOTTISH POETRY LIBRARY

Brilliant new website and shop!

Order your Edwin Morgan T-Shirt online!

This T-shirt, designed in collaboration with Edwin Morgan, carries a poem written specifically to be worn. In a striking design, it celebrates our relationship to the universe, and the ‘multiverse’ beyond it. It is a Scottish Poetry Library exclusive and a limited edition of 100.

Order here: SPL SHOP

Alex Boyd - Sonnets

Alex Boyd's Sonnet exhibition in the Art Lovers Cafe gallery!

Alex Boyd's website:
www.alexboyd.co.uk

music.alexboyd.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Supper and Sonnets at Six

House for an Art Lover is delighted to host a Poets Supper with readings by the Makar, Liz Lochhead and Edwin Morgans’ biographer and poet, James McGonigal which responds to the stunning Sonnets exhibition in the Art Lovers Cafe on Thursday 16 February from 6-9pm.

Supper and Sonnets at Six will pay tribute to Edwin Morgan, featuring readings from his Sonnets from Scotland along with original work by Liz Lochhead and James McGonigal.

Guests will be able to view Alex Boyd's Sonnets exhibition of breathtaking landscape photography in the Art Lovers Cafe gallery from 6.00pm. Supper will be served at 6.30pm followed by the Sonnets at 7.30pm.

Tickets cost £25 per person which includes a delicious two course Scottish supper. Tickets are available to purchase from the Art Lovers Shop, either in person, by telephoning 0141 353 4776 or by clicking here. (House for an Art Lover)

 

Notes:
Liz Lochhead was born in Motherwell, Lanarkshire in 1947 and attended the Glasgow School of Art between 1965 and 1970. Her first poetry collection Memo for Spring was published in 1972, and her plays include Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, and Blood and Ice. Ms Lochhead was appointed to succeed Edwin Morgan as Scotland’s new Makar in January 2011.

When Ms Lochhead was appointed as Makar, the UK poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy stated: " Since her early work in the 1970s, she has been an inspirational presence in British poetry – funny, feisty, female, full of feeling; a fantastic performer of her work and a writer who has tirelessly brought poetry to the drama and drama into poetry. Like her wonderful predecessor and pal, Edwin Morgan, Liz Lochhead possesses the deeply Scottish qualities of independence, inquisitiveness and inventiveness.”

James McGonigal was born in Dumfries in 1947, and has lived and worked in Glasgow since the1980s. He is Emeritus Professor of Education in the University of Glasgow. He is a founding editor of the academic series SCROLL (Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature). His own poetry has won prizes in Scotland, Ireland and the UK.

Recent publications include Beyond the Last Dragon: A Life of Edwin Morgan (Sandstone Press, 2010) which won the Saltire Scottish Research Book of the Year Award 2011, and Cloud Pibroch (Mariscat Press, 2010) which won the Michael Marks Poetry Pamphlet Award.

James McGonigal came to know Edwin Morgan as his doctoral student in the early 1970s and remained a friend thereafter. He supported the poet in his final illness as carer and confidant, becoming one of his literary executors in the late 1990s and latterly his biographer.

He is currently working on a Selected Letters of the poet, and also helping to organize the Trust Fund that will administer the annual bequest which Morgan left to support and publish young Scottish poets.

Edwin Morgan

 

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Competition 2012

The competition, sponsored by the University of Strathclyde and hosted by the Book Festival, offers one of the biggest poetry prizes in the UK, with awards totalling £6,600.

2012 will be the fifth year the competition has run and this year's judges will be Don Paterson and Gillian Ferguson. For the first time we will also be accepting entries in Scots. The competition will open for online and postal entries on February 1st 2012 and this year's prizegiving will take place at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August.

Read [more]

 

 

Poetry Competition 2011

The prizewinners in the fourth Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition were announced at a ceremony at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Wednesday, August 17. The ceremony was held just before the first anniversary of the death, at the age of 90, of Professor Edwin Morgan, who held the post of Scotland’s first Makar, or national poet.

The competition, sponsored by the University of Strathclyde and hosted by the Book Festival, offers one of the biggest poetry prizes in the UK, with awards totalling £6,600. The winning poems were chosen by this year’s judges, poets Vicki Feaver and Kona Macphee.

Read [more]

 

Edwin Morgan ShirtPoem

Edwin Morgan ShirtPoem

EDWIN MORGAN’S SHIRT POEM

As a sequel to the successful Mug Poem (2004), Edwin Morgan wrote a poem for a t-shirt – the SHIRT POEM.

Edwin Morgan ShirtPoem     Edwin Morgan ShirtPoem     Edwin Morgan ShirtPoem

It is a poem that cleverly uses both sides of the shirt:

The front reading:

THE UNIVERSE
IS A GORGROUS
FRONT
FOR
THE MULTIVERSE

and the back:

THE MULTIVERSE
LOVES
OUR UNIVERSE
AND ALWAYS
BACKS
IT

It was released in a limited edition to mark the 90th birthday of Edwin Morgan on 27 April 2010 and presented to him at his birthday party.

The SHIRT POEM is available in various sizes at the Scottish Poetry Library (SPL) in Edinburgh. (5 Crichton's Close, Canongate (just off the Royal Mile, near the new Scottish Parliament at Holyrood), Edinburgh, EH8 8DT, phone +44 (0)131 557 2876, www.spl.org.uk, Open: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 10-5, Thursday 10-8, Saturday 10-4, Closed: Monday, Sunday )

The Bottle Imp

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The Milk of Space
by Hamish Whyte

Edwin Morgan's science fiction poems roughly follow the trajectory of the history of the genre. His early poems and prose pieces show a strong fantasy streak, but they were more what Poe called 'grotesque and arabesque'. Science added its richness to the work after EM had a kind of Damascus experience when he heard that Russia had sent up its second sputnik [...] There was an impetus in what was happening in other sciences too — biology and biochemistry: Morgan felt that science was catching up with science fiction. [more]

 

Southbank Centre

Edwin Morgan

 

 

 

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Southbank Centre - Purcell Room
The Scots Makar
A Tribute to Edwin Morgan

Wednesday 3 November 2010, 7:45pm

Edwin Morgan was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance, an internationalist whose translations brought inspiration from afar, yet a man who stayed true to his Glasgow roots. He became the first Scottish National Poet, The Scots Makar, in 2004.

An outstanding bill of artists includes the acclaimed sax player Tommy Smith, a long-time collaborator with Morgan; the writer and actor Benno Plassmann performing scenes from Tales of the Baron, which was inspired by Morgan's translations; and poets Richard Price, Jackie Kay, Roddy Lumsden and Bill Manhire, who raise a poetic glass, with tribute readings alongside film and archive recordings.

In association with The Poetry Society

[click here for more information]

 

Gilgamesh at RSAMD

 

 

 

 

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Gilgamesh
Tue 02/11/10 To Sat 06/11/10
What lasts, what changes, what survives? Is anything immortal?

The epic of Gilgamesh is the world’s oldest surviving poem, over 4000 years old, but only discovered in the middle of the 19th century.

The Play of Gilgamesh was written by Edwin Morgan, Scotland's national poet, celebrating his 90th year in 2010. Morgan’s verse-play translation brings the ancient story of the hero king Gilgamesh to life, moving easily between
ritual, comedy and moments of intense beauty – and has never been performed until now. Promising to be a highlight of the season, renowned theatremaker Tam Dean Burn directs an edited version of Morgan's larger than life play with songs and original music composed and played live by jazz and Scottish traditional music performers.

Tam Dean Burn is directing RSAMD student performers in Gilgamesh, an edited version of Edwin Morgan's The Play of Gilgamesh from 2 - 6 November at 7.30pm at the RSAMD (Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama). Tickets are £11, £9 concession.
There will also be a performance of Edwin Morgan's Ten Theatre Poems with Tam Dean Burn and student performers at 6pm on 5 November. Tickets are free with a ticket for that evening’s performance of Gilgamesh.

[click here for more information]

 

Beyond the Last Dragon

 

sandstone press

 

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Beyond the Last Dragon: A Life of Edwin Morgan
James McGonigal

THE FIRST BIOGRAPHY OF SCOTLAND'S POET LAUREATE, EDWIN MORGAN

Edwin Morgan’s restless imagination moved easily between multiple worlds, voices and identities. His own life story, told here for the first time, also reveals a range of identities – as academic, cultural activist, radical writer, international traveller, gay man and national poet. These identities were sometimes in conflict, or kept hidden and apart.

Beyond the Last Dragon, written with his full support, explores hitherto unknown archive resources and creative work. It recounts an amazing and sometimes troubled career, using the poet’s own letters, poems and plays from the 1930s to the present day to uncover the often local origins of his still remarkable – at 90 years –inventiveness and flair.

All this is set against Edwin Morgan’s moving struggle against ‘the last dragon’ of cancer, and to remain creatively alive in the face of suffering.

ISBN: 978-1-905207-23-7
>>>SANDSTONEPRESS


 

This page is Part of www.EdwinMorgan.com © 2001-2012 Claudia Kraszkiewicz

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