Edwin Morgan 1920 - 2010
I was hugely saddened to read about the death of the poet Edwin Morgan last week. Morgan was the last of a great generation of Scottish poets that included Iain Crichton Smith, Norman MacCaig, Sorley Maclean, George Mackay Brown and Sydney Goodsir Smyth.
Sumarising Morgan's eclectic and prolific output is quite beyond my powers of literary criticism; he wrote poems ranging from Glasgow to Saturn and back again via the moons of Jupiter. He wrote some of the funniest and most memorable concrete poetry I've ever read and was a talented and innovative play write. Morgan was hugely popular and respected in his native city and has always been closely associated with Glasgow. There is a real humanity at the heart of all Morgan's writing and it's no exaggeration to say that it was Edwin Morgan's poetry that persuaded me to go to Glasgow University rather than to Edinburgh as I had originally planned.
Morgan wrote a large number of memorable love poems throughout his life but it was only on his seventieth birthday in 1990 that he came out as being gay. In an interview with the Guardian later in 2004 Morgan said:
"I wrote these poems with the thought that they'd be understood one day. If I'd been completely inhibited, I wouldn't have written them. The other aspect is that the secrecy, the double-life thing, had a dramatic side to it. You could write about that too, sometimes, in a shadowed way."
I went to a poetry reading in celebration of Morgan's 70th Birthday in 1990 and heard him read some of these poems. He was positively glowing with pride.
Shantyman
Shantyman, the surf of heaven
is breaking, somehwere.
White shirt in blackness,
brown arms along the rail
in the wind. And we are
plunging without stars
at midnight, singing
the sea
to the sea.
The sea's
ear is dull, repeat it, but
we have moved on.
All the old days are
Shenandoah.
For the present,
sing it negligent
of solemn waters and the dark.
The cutlasses won't stir,
or the piles of brass and tar.
He slaps the rail, looks up
for a new verse,
we give everything
and everything we have
rolls down to heaven like Rio
on the blue back of his hand.
One Cigarette
No smoke without you, my fire.
After you left,
your cigarette glowed on in my ashtray
and sent up a long thread of such quiet grey
I smiled to wonder who would believe its signal
of so much love. One cigarette
in the non-smoker's tray.
As the last spire
trembles up, a sudden draught
blows it winding into my face.
Is it smell, is it taste?
You are here again, and I am drunk on your tobacco lips.
Out with the light.
Let the smoke lie back in the dark.
Till I hear the very ash
sigh down among the flowers of brass
I'll breathe, and long past midnight, your last kiss.
Strawberries
There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you
let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills
let the storm wash the plates
Further Reading
Edwin Morgan at the Scottish Poetry Archive
Carcanet Press Poetry Publisher
edwinmorgan.com
Sumarising Morgan's eclectic and prolific output is quite beyond my powers of literary criticism; he wrote poems ranging from Glasgow to Saturn and back again via the moons of Jupiter. He wrote some of the funniest and most memorable concrete poetry I've ever read and was a talented and innovative play write. Morgan was hugely popular and respected in his native city and has always been closely associated with Glasgow. There is a real humanity at the heart of all Morgan's writing and it's no exaggeration to say that it was Edwin Morgan's poetry that persuaded me to go to Glasgow University rather than to Edinburgh as I had originally planned.
Morgan wrote a large number of memorable love poems throughout his life but it was only on his seventieth birthday in 1990 that he came out as being gay. In an interview with the Guardian later in 2004 Morgan said:
"I wrote these poems with the thought that they'd be understood one day. If I'd been completely inhibited, I wouldn't have written them. The other aspect is that the secrecy, the double-life thing, had a dramatic side to it. You could write about that too, sometimes, in a shadowed way."
I went to a poetry reading in celebration of Morgan's 70th Birthday in 1990 and heard him read some of these poems. He was positively glowing with pride.
Shantyman
Shantyman, the surf of heaven
is breaking, somehwere.
White shirt in blackness,
brown arms along the rail
in the wind. And we are
plunging without stars
at midnight, singing
the sea
to the sea.
The sea's
ear is dull, repeat it, but
we have moved on.
All the old days are
Shenandoah.
For the present,
sing it negligent
of solemn waters and the dark.
The cutlasses won't stir,
or the piles of brass and tar.
He slaps the rail, looks up
for a new verse,
we give everything
and everything we have
rolls down to heaven like Rio
on the blue back of his hand.
One Cigarette
No smoke without you, my fire.
After you left,
your cigarette glowed on in my ashtray
and sent up a long thread of such quiet grey
I smiled to wonder who would believe its signal
of so much love. One cigarette
in the non-smoker's tray.
As the last spire
trembles up, a sudden draught
blows it winding into my face.
Is it smell, is it taste?
You are here again, and I am drunk on your tobacco lips.
Out with the light.
Let the smoke lie back in the dark.
Till I hear the very ash
sigh down among the flowers of brass
I'll breathe, and long past midnight, your last kiss.
Strawberries
There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you
let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills
let the storm wash the plates
Further Reading
Edwin Morgan at the Scottish Poetry Archive
Carcanet Press Poetry Publisher
edwinmorgan.com