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Collected Poems

Edwin Morgan

Cover Picture of Collected Poems
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Categories: 20th Century, Bestsellers, Scottish
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
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(Pub. May 2013)
9781847779656
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(Pub. Feb 1997)
9781857541885
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  • At seventy I thought I had come through,
    like parting a bead curtain at 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.


    from 'Epilogue: Seven Decades'

               
    Edwin Morgan 'catches in full sight' in his lyric epiphanies, in the focus and refocus of sequences, the wily relocation of words in concrete poems, the weird rhythms of sound poems. His transforming imagination is democratic, generous and inclusive. Even the sonnet form becomes a new experiment for a poet of questing and anarchic vision, unwilling to rest on rules.

    'More than the work of most poets,' writes lain Crichton Smith, Morgan's poetry 'welcomes the twentieth century, with its gadgets, its paradoxes, graffiti, new languages, torn advertisements, unconscious jokes, voyages...' This volume includes Poems of Thirty Years, Themes on a Variation, and some fifty uncollected poems from 1939 to 1982.
    Preface
    Prologue: Sculpture


    Dies Irae (1952)
    Dies Irae
    Stanzas of the Jeopardy
    'What waves have beaten…'
    A Warning of Waters at Evening
    The Sleights of Darkness
    The Sleights of Time
    Sleight-of-Morals
    Harrowing Heaven, 1924
    From the Anglo-Saxon:
    The Ruin
    The Seafarer
    The Wanderer

    Riddles: Swallows; Swan; Bookworm; Storm
    From the Middle English:
    The Grave

    The Vision of Cathkin Braes (1952)
    The Vision of Cathkin Braes
    A Courtly Overture
    Ingram Lake or, Five Acts on the House
    A Snib for the Nones
    Verses for a Christmas Card
    A Song of the Petrel

    The Cape of Good Hope (1955)
    The Cape of Good Hope


    The Whittrick: a Poem in Eight Dialogues (1961; first published as a whole, 1973)

    from Newspoems (1965-1971)
    Notice in Hell
    Notice in Heaven
    Sick Man
    Charon's Song
    Forgetful Duck
    Möbius's Bed
    Come In Old Cock
    Idyll
    New English Riddles: 1
    Advice to a Corkscrew
    Unpublished Poems by Creeley: 2
    Visual soundpoem

    from Emergent Poems (1967)
    Plea
    Dialeck Piece
    Nightmare
    Manifesto

    from Gnomes (1968)
    Strawberry Fields Forever
    Archives
    Astrodome
    The Computer's Second Christmas Card

    The Second Life (1968)
    The Old Man and the Sea
    The Death of Marilyn Monroe
    Je ne regrette rien
    The Domes of St Sophia
    The White Rhinoceros
    The Third Day of the Wolf
    Aberdeen Train
    The Opening of the Forth Road Bridge
    To Hugh MacDiarmid
    To Ian Hamilton Finlay
    An Addition to the Family
    Canedolia
    Starryveldt
    Message Clear
    Bees' Nest
    French Persian Cats Having a Ball
    Orgy
    To Joan Eardley
    Linoleum Chocolate
    Good Friday
    The Starlings in George Square
    King Billy
    Glasgow Green
    The Suspect
    In the Snack-bar
    Trio
    Pomander
    Summer Haiku
    Siesta of a Hungarian Snake
    Boats and Places
    Seven Headlines
    The Computer's First Christmas Card
    Opening the Cage
    The Chaffinch Map of Scotland
    The Second Life
    The Sheaf
    The Unspoken
    From a City Balcony
    When you go
    Strawberries
    The Witness
    One Cigarette
    The Picnic
    Absence
    Without It
    The Welcome
    O Pioneers!
    Construction for I. K. Brunel
    Unscrambling the Waves at Goonhilly
    The Tower of Pisa
    Spacepoem 1: From Laika to Gagarin
    Chinese Cat
    Islands
    In Sobieski's Shield
    From the Domain of Arnheim
    For the International Poetry Incarnation
    What is 'Paradise Lost' really about?
    The Ages
    A View of Things


    from Penguin Modern Poets 15 (1969)
    The Flowers of Scotland

    The Horseman's Word (1970)
    Arabian Nights Magic Horse
    Clydesdale
    Newmarket
    Centaur
    Eohippus
    Kelpie
    Hrimfaxi
    Zane's
    Hortobágy
    Elegy

    from Instamatic Poems (1972)
    GLASGOW 5 MARCH 1971
    ('With a ragged diamond')
    GLASGOW 5 MARCH 1971
    ('Quickly the magistrate')
    NICE 5 MARCH 1971
    CHICAGO MAY 1971
    GERMANY DECEMBER 1970
    NIGERIA UNDATED REPORTED OCTOBER 1971
    LEATHERHEAD SURREY SEPTEMBER 1971
    AVIEMORE INVERNESSSHIRE AUGUST 1971
    MOUGINS PROVENCE SEPTEMBER 1971
    VENICE APRIL 1971
    LONDON JUNE 1970
    ROCKALL INVERNESSSHIRE JUNE 1972
    ELLINGHAM SUFFOLK JANUARY 1972
    LANCASHIRE NOVEMBER 1971
    WASHINGTON SEPTEMBER 1971
    TRANSLUNAR SPACE MARCH 1972
    BANGAON INDIA JULY 1971
    GLASGOW OCTOBER 1971
    BRADFORD JUNE 1972
    CAMPOBASSO ITALY UNDATED REPORTED MARCH 1971
    LONDON NOVEMBER 1971
    ('At the Festival of Islam')
    GLASGOW NOVEMBER 1971
    ('It is a fine thronged…')
    GLASGOW NOVEMBER 1971
    ('The "speckled pipe" of the MacCrimmons')
    MILAN UNDATED REPORTED OCTOBER 1971


    From Glasgow to Saturn (1973)
    Columba's Song
    Floating off to Timor
    In Glasgow
    Kierkegaard's Song
    Tropic
    Shantyman
    Oban Girl
    The Woman
    The Apple's Song
    Drift
    Fado
    After the Party
    At the Television Set
    From the North
    The Milk-cart
    Estranged
    For Bonfires i-iii
    Blue Toboggans
    Song of the Child
    Lord Jim's Ghost's Tiger Poem
    Flakes
    Hyena
    The Loch Ness Monster's Song
    The Mill
    London:
    I St James's Park
    II Soho
    III The Post Office Tower

    Interferences: a sequence of 9 poems
    Che
    The Fifth Gospel
    Afterwards
    The Gourds
    Last Message
    Frontier Story
    The Barrow: a dialogue
    Thoughts of a Module
    The First Men on Mercury
    Spacepoem 3: Off Course
    A Too Hot Summer
    Itinerary
    Boxers
    Letters of Mr Lonelyhearts
    A Jar Revisited
    Pleasures of a Technological University
    The Computer's First Dialect Poems
    I The Furze Kidder's Bating (Northamptonshire)
    II The Birkie and the Howdie (Lowland Scots)
    The Computer's First Code Poem
    Not Playing the Game
    Rider i-v
    Guy Fawkes Moon
    Saturday Night
    Death in Duke Street
    Christmas Eve
    Stobhill
    Glasgow Sonnets i-x


    The New Divan (1977)
    The New Divan
    Memories of Earth
    Space Sonnet & Polyfilla
    Polyfilla
    Pictures Floating from the World
    The Reversals
    Twilight of a Tyranny
    The World
    A Girl
    Three Trees
    On John MacLean
    Vico's Song
    Sir Henry Morgan's Song
    Shaker Shaken
    Lévi-Strauss at the Lie-Detector
    Wittgenstein on Egdon Heath
    Ten Theatre Poems
    Five Poems on Film Directors
    School's Out
    Adventures of the Anti-sage
    The Divide
    Smoke
    The Beginning
    The Planets
    The Question
    Resurrections
    Unfinished Poems

    Star Gate: Science Fiction Poems (1979)
    INSTAMATIC THE MOON FEBRUARY 1973
    The Worlds
    Particle Poems i-vi
    Era
    Foundation
    A Home in Space
    The Mouth
    The Clone Poem
    The Moons of Jupiter
    Amalthea, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto

    Uncollected Poems (1976-1981)
    The Rock
    The Mummy
    Five Waiting Poems
    Instructions to an Actor
    The Archaeopteryx's Song
    A Good Year for Death
    Migraine Attack
    At Central Station
    Winter
    New Year Sonnets i-x
    Surrealism Revisited
    Interview
    Ore
    Stele
    Gorgon
    Fountain
    Book
    Mt. Caucasus
    On the Water
    Moving House
    Home on the Range
    On the Needle's Point
    In the Bottle
    Jordanstone Sonnets i-iii
    Caliban Falls Asleep in the Isle Full of Noises
    Iran
    The Coals
    On the Train i-iii
    A Riddle
    A Pair of Cats
    Little Blue Blue
    Eve and Adam
    Grendel
    Tarkovsky in Glasgow
    Jack London in Heaven
    Cinquevalli


    Sonnets from Scotland (1984)
    Slate
    Carboniferous
    Post-Glacial
    In Argyll
    The Ring of Brodgar
    Silva Caledonia
    Pilate at Fortingall
    The Mirror
    The Picts
    Colloquy in Glaschu
    Memento
    Matthew Paris
    At Stirling Castle, 1507
    Thomas Young, M.A. (St Andrews)
    Lady Grange on St Kilda
    Theory of the Earth
    Poe in Glasgow
    De Quincey in Glasgow
    Peter Guthrie Tait, Topologist
    G.M. Hopkins in Glasgow
    1893
    The Ticket
    North Africa
    Caledonian Antisyzygy
    Travellers (1)
    Travellers (2)
    Seferis on Eigg
    Matt McGinn
    Post-Referendum
    Gangs
    After a Death
    Not the Burrell Collection
    1983
    A Place of Many Waters
    The Poet in the City
    The Norn (1)
    The Norn (2)
    The Target
    After Fallout
    The Age of Heracleum
    Computer Error: Neutron Strike
    Inward Bound
    The Desert
    The Coin
    The Solway Canal
    A Scottish Japanese Print
    Outward Bound
    On Jupiter
    Clydegrad
    A Golden Age
    The Summons

    from Selected Poems (1985)
    Night Pillion
    from The Dictionary of Tea
    Cook in Hawaii
    The Break-In
    An Alphabet of Goddesses

    From the Video Box (1986)

    from Themes on a Variation (1988)
    The Dowser
    Variations on Omar Khayyám
    Stanzas
    The Room
    Dear man, my love goes out in waves
    Waking on a Dark Morning
    The Gurney
    The Bench
    Nineteen Kinds of Barley
    A Trace of Wings
    The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
    A Bobbed Sonnet for Code Cobber
    The Computer's First Birthday Card
    Byron at Sixty-Five
    Shakespeare: a Reconstruction
    To the Queen: a Reconstruction
    Chillon: a Reconstruction
    True Ease in Writing: a Reconstruction
    On Time: a Reconstruction
    Not Marble: a Reconstruction
    Halley's Comet
    The Gorbals Mosque
    Rules for Dwarf-Throwing
    The Bear
    Save the Whale Ball
    Dom Raja
    The Change
    Vereshchagin's Barrow


    Uncollected Poems (1949-1982)
    'The Triumph of Life': a conclusion to Shelley's Poem
    Making a Poem
    Dogs round a Tree
    Instant Theatre Go Home
    A Child's Coat of Many Colours
    The Fleas
    Warning Poem
    The Moment of Death
    Blues and Peal: Concrete 1969
    By the Fire
    The Furies
    Trilobites
    An Arran Death
    Heron
    Blackbirds
    Blackbird Marigolds
    The Blackbird
    The Dolphin's Song
    Northern Nocturnal
    The Glasgow Subway Poems
    The Budgie
    The Cat
    The Giraffe
    The Piranhas
    By the Preaching of the Word
    The Han Princess
    From Cathkin Braes: a View of Korea
    Friendly Village
    Black and Gold
    Hunger
    Spell
    Chicago North Side
    The Demolishers
    The Morning
    A New Book by Wittgenstein
    The Little White Rows of Scotland
    The Day the Sea Spoke
    Found Poem: the Executioner
    Found Poems
    My Uncle
    My Dog
    My Greenhouse
    Found Poem: Glasgow
    Found Poem: the Awakening
    Found Poems
    Small Holdings
    Rough Neuk Quarry and Pond
    Sta' o'Stable
    Evandale Glow-worms at Night
    Dunbar Highway at Night
    'Jock Tamson's Bairns' at Dawn
    Gowrie in the Gloamin'

    Epilogue: Seven Decades

    Index of Titles
    Index of First Lines
    Edwin Morgan (1920-2010) was born in Glasgow. He served with the RAMC in the Middle East during World War II. He became lecturer in English at the University of Glasgow, where he had studied, and retired as titular Professor in 1980. He was Glasgow's first Poet Laureate and from 2004 until ... read more
    Awards won by Edwin Morgan Winner, 2000 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry
    Praise for Edwin Morgan 'Edwin Morgan's experimental and science fiction poems often imply joyful adventure, boundless optimism.'

    Carol Rumens, The Guardian where 'A Little Catechism' was Poem of the Week

    'distinctly and excitingly nonconformist [...] they stunningly convey the poet's love for Glasgow. The traditional structure is interjected with Scottish language and anecdotes, making it a thought-provoking read.'

    Scottish Field

      'A broad celebration of one of the most lively and creative writers of his time'

    Mike Ferguson, Stride Magazine
    'For readers new to Morgan, it forms a perfect introduction, showcasing his fearless experimentation... For those who already know Morgan's work, this selection is a welcome romp of rediscovery. It offers a reminder that he masters every form - from sonnets to strict rhyme schemes with free rhythm to the disintegrating word curtains of some of his early concrete poems - and gilds them all with the humour and humanity that infuse his own effervescent voice.... He never shrinks from the darkness but the shimmering beauty of his words somehow makes it more bearable.'

    Fiona Rintoul, The Herald

    'Thank God, thank whatever all-seeing quick-witted deity you like, we have Edwin Morgan to show us how to live, and keep living..."pleasure" is nowhere strong enough to convey the joyous energy of his work.'

    Kathleen Jamie 

     'Edwin Morgan's translation of twenty-five poems into Scots, now reissued after almost half a century, finesses one difficulty by substituting another. Wi Haill Voice gives Mayakovsky a shout from the streets without making him a Dickensian exercised in dialect - Scots provides the necessary sense of estrangement.'
    William Logan, The New Criterion
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