TIMES PAST
Every week we’ll highlight famous Glaswegians Edwin Morgan
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EDWIN Morgan’s love of objector, Edwin served in the literature began when he was Royal Army Medical Corps from a young child, and his early 1940. He returned to university in interest sparked a career 1946 and a year later graduated that would take him all the way to with first class honours before becoming Scotland’s first Makar, joining the staff of the English or National Poet, of modern times. Literature Department, turning
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down a scholarship to Oxford. His Born in 1920, in the West studies had included French and End of Glasgow, his parents Russian and, later in his career, Stanley and Margaret were he went on to become a prolific politically conservative and translator.
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Presbyterian. His father was a director of a small firm of iron and Edwin first published under steel merchants. Edwin attended the name “Kaa” in the High the former Rutherglen Academy, School of Glasgow Magazine, and the High School of Glasgow. in 1936, and went on using
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that nom de plume in the Glasgow While he was at Glasgow University Magazine, emerging University, the Second World as reviewer and translator under War broke out and, having his own name in a variety of registered as a conscientious periodicals after the war. Morgan’s first book of poetry was published in 1952 and he went on to produce hundreds of sonnets, poems, sound poems, essays and translations. Glasgow figured strongly in his work. He worked as a lecturer at Glasgow until his retirement as a professor in 1980.
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He was appointed Glasgow’s Poet Laureate in 1999 and used the public position to support gay rights, becoming an active supporter of the repeal of Section 28, criticising Church and business leaders for their support of the ‘Keep the Clause’ campaign. He won the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and the Weidenfeld Prize for Translation. Edwin died in 2010.