The Edwin Morgan Trust

How often will I think you, until our dying steps forget this light, forget that we ever knew the happy glen, or that I ever said, We must jump into the sun, and we jumped into the sun. ☀️💚 ‘From a City Balcony’ by #EdwinMorgan, written in May 1964 and published in The Second Life (EUP, 1968)

Edwin Morgan’s translation of ‘Maiskaya pesenka’ by Vladimir Mayakovsky for #MayDay – published in Collected Translations (Carcanet, 1996)

Tomorrow night: the Clydebuilt 17 showcase! 💫 Award-winning poet Niall Campbell will introduce his Clydebuilt mentees – Ruth Aylett, Ellen Renton, Gabrielle Tse and Catherine Wilson Garry – who will read some of the work they developed during their Clydebuilt mentorship. 🗓️ Thursday 30 April 🕖 7–9 p.m. 📍Waterstones Sauchiehall St, Glasgow 🎟️ £7/5 on the door @ruthaylett @ellen_ren @gabrielletse @cwilsongarry @niallcpoetry

✨ HAPPY BIRTHDAY EDDIE! ✨ On what would have been #EdwinMorgan’s 106th birthday, we’re sharing some of the wonderful poems written in tribute to Eddie over the years. — ‘For Edwin Morgan’ by Iain Crichton Smith, published in Deer on the High Hills: Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2021) — ‘For Edwin Morgan, Maker’ by Janice Galloway, and an extract from ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at Edwin Morgan’ by Gerry Cambridge, both published in Unknown is Best: A Celebration of Edwin Morgan at Eighty (SPL & Mariscat, 2000) — extract from ‘Kissing Edwin Morgan’ by Roddy Lumsden, published in So Glad I’m Me (Bloodaxe, 2017) — ‘edwin @ 90’ by the late, great Aonghas MacNeacail, written for the occasion of Eddie’s 90th birthday 💚

📢 Calling all emerging poets – applications are now open for CLYDEBUILT 19! Facilitated by St Mungo’s Mirrorball, Clydebuilt offers emerging poets the chance to work with an experienced mentor and develop a portfolio of new work. Up to four poets will be selected to take part in the year-long programme (September 2026–September 2027). To be eligible to apply, you must: 🌍 Live in Scotland ✏️ Not be enrolled in any writing course or receiving structured writing support as of Sept. 2026 📚 Not have published a full-length poetry collection 🚗 Be able to travel to Glasgow/the central belt for some in-person meetings/events For more details on how to apply visit the link in our bio! Deadline: Thursday 25 June @ 5 p.m.

🚨 The Open the Doors Fund is open for applications! With grants of up to £1000 available, this fund aims to open doors for poets and translators based in Scotland by offering financial support towards activities that contribute to their creative or professional development. 🗓️ Applications are invited twice a year – the deadline for this round of applications is Thursday 14 May at 5 p.m. For details on eligibility and how to apply, head to our website via the link in our bio.

Happy #WorldArtDay! 🎨 In 2005, The Herald conducted a poll on Scotland’s favourite paintings held in Scottish public collections, with the top ten announced that August. The following month, the Herald’s poetry editor Lesley Duncan received a letter from Edwin Morgan: ‘I seem to be in a prolific mood and send you ten poems inspired by the ten pictures of your competition. They are yours if you find any interest in printing them.’ Two years later, Morgan’s poems and the corresponding artworks were published in Beyond the Sun: Scotland’s Favourite Paintings (Luath Press, 2007). In her intro to Beyond the Sun, Lesley Duncan noted Flood Tide by Joan Eardley as Morgan’s favourite painting of the ten, the poet having been ‘a long-term admirer of the artist whose work spans the realism of working-class Glasgow and the timeless shore-scapes of the east coast.’ She described Morgan’s poem as ‘a celebration of Eardley, the free creative spirit, as she strides in the salty bluster of a cliff-top in her paint-splashed corduroys.’ Image of Flood Tide by Joan Eardley © Joan Eardley Estate @joaneardleyofficial

How good it would be to buy a ticket and travel to Oneself, it is there all right, alive, inside us * * * Edwin Morgan’s translation of ‘József Attila’ by Attila József, who was born #OnThisDay in 1905. Published in Sweeping Out the Dark (@carcanetpress , 1994). In a letter to the Finnish poet Anselm Hollo in 1962, Morgan wrote of being ‘at the moment considerably excited by Attila József whom I’m translating for the Wild Hawthorn (through the medium of versions in other more accessible languages – but even by this method the extraordinary force of the man comes through).’ The Wild Hawthorn selection fell through, much to Morgan’s dismay. Thirty years later, Morgan published ‘Attila József – Fragments’, illustrated by John Byrne, with each fragment one to seven lines long and concerning love, grief and poetry. These were later included in Morgan’s 2001 collection ‘Attila József: Sixty Poems’, published by Mariscat Press.

‘Good Friday’ by Edwin Morgan 🌞🐣 published in The Second Life (EUP, 1968)

Originally in Finger of a Frenchman (2011) @carcanetpress , but now available in Greengown: New and Selected Poems (2022) @carcanetpress , here’s David Kinloch’s ‘Edwin Morgan is eating an orange’ for your citrusy pleasure. 🍊 🍊 🍊 Greengown: New and Selected Poems by David Kinloch David Kinloch is one of the notable Scottish poets of his generation. Edwin Morgan admired his ‘sparkling poems full of sensuous richness and linguistic inventiveness’; and Douglas Messerli declared, ‘David Kinloch is surely one of the most innovative poets ever to come out of Scotland... [his] readers must be prepared to take a long voyage through language, imagination, and space. While it isn’t always easy, it’s always worth the trip.’ This is his fifth Carcanet collection. It includes a distillation of his earlier work, and new poems that delight and challenge. Morgan praised his success in the ‘impossible genre’, the prose poem, his elegies, his flytings. He has been an activist as well as a poet, helping to set up The Edwin Morgan Trust and the first Scottish Writers’ Centre. Link in bio to pick up your copy. 🔗 #edwinmorgan #queerpoetics #davidkinloch #poetry #queerpoetry

🚨 Final call for submissions! 🚨 The deadline for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2026 closes *tonight* at 11.59 pm, so if you haven’t already then now’s the time to submit! Open to poets under 30 born, raised or currently living in Scotland who have not yet published a full-length collection. Visit the link in our bio for the full eligibility and submissions info – good luck! ✨

⏳Just one week left to submit to the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award ⏳ If you’re a poet under 30 born, raised or currently living in Scotland and you have not yet published a full-length collection, we want to read your work! For full details on how to apply please visit our website. The deadline for submissions is Monday 30 March at 11.59pm – good luck!