Centenary Selected Poems

by Edwin Morgan, Hamish Whyte (Editor)

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 collection in 1952 to his last in 2010, the year of his death at the age of ninety. All his different voices speak here - animals, inanimate objects, dramatic monologues by people, (famous people, unknown people and imaginary people) - in a multitude of forms and styles - sonnets, science fiction, concrete, sound, his own invented stanzas - together with his evocations of place, especially his home city of Glasgow, and a wide selection of his deservedly famous love poems. They all illustrate his incurable curiosity and a kind of relentless optimism for humanity.

Genres: Poetry

354 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 30, 2020

About the author

Edwin George Morgan OBE was a Scottish poet and translator who is associated with the Scottish literary renaissance. He is widely recognized as one of the foremost Scottish poets of the 20th century. In 1999, Morgan was made the first Glasgow Poet Laureate. In 2004, he was named as the first Scottish national poet: The Scots Makar.

Reviews

[Stephen Kirley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very fine collection of Morgan’s best work and a terrific entry point for anyone wishing to explore his writing. There is humour and humility, laughter and love (alongside many thought-provoking pieces), each piece clearly demonstrating why Morgan was held in such high regard.

[Andrés Ordorica · Rating 5 out of 5]

By The Fire is a poem I could happily spend the rest of my life lost in. To write of love like Morgan did in this poem is a magical feat of human engineering.