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Collected PoemsEdwin Morgan![]() 10% off eBook (EPUB)
10% off Paperback
Categories: 20th Century, Bestsellers, Scottish
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE! (Pub. May 2013) 9781847779656 £19.95 £17.95 Paperback (608 pages) (Pub. Feb 1997) 9781857541885 £25.00 £22.50 To use the EPUB version, you will need to have Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) installed on your device. You can find out more at https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions.html. Please do not purchase this version if you do not have and are not prepared to install, Adobe Digital Editions.
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
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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