Edwin Morgan: Messages and Transformations

Abstract

Edwin Morgan is an extremely various poet. His work takes many different directions in subject-matter, style and perceived ‘seriousness’. Having written sonnets about spaceships, and concrete poems about Shakespeare, he might seem to specialise in unlikely juxtapositions, not least in the witty title of one of his best known collections: From Glasgow to Saturn. Some readers have been positively disconcerted by the element of play in Morgan’s work, and others by its sheer variety. The poet knows this:

I think people like to have a thematic centre, like to know where they are. They feel more comfortable if they know what is central to any poet they’re reading or thinking about. But I would like to defend what I do … I have always had the sense that I should do different things, both in subject and in form … The very fact that one person is responsible for all these poems means that there’s some sort of unity about them.¹