Alan Morrison (poet)

Alan Duncan Morrison (born 18 July 1974, Brighton) is a British poet.[1]

Overview of works

Morrison's work is influenced by poets including John Davidson and Harold Monro,[2] and Anglo-Welsh poets Alun Lewis and Dylan Thomas. However, his earliest influences were John Keats, Wilfred Owen, William Blake, Andrew Marvell, Emily Brontë and Percy Shelley.[3]

His poems are often characterised by social and polemical traits.[4][5][6][7][8]

Morrison selected, edited and designed the Collected Poems of David Kessel, O the Windows of the Bookshop Must Be Broken.[6] Between 2007 and 2012 he ran poetry workshops at Mill View psychiatric hospital, Hove.[9] In 2008 he gained an NHS Artists' Award to produce an anthology of writing from the workshops (2009) from which he was then commissioned to write his own poetic response to this residency, resulting in his epic work Captive Dragons / The Shadow Thorns, published in October 2011.[10][11]

His collection Blaze a Vanishing[12] and The Tall Skies (Waterloo Press, 2013) was funded by an Arts Council Grant for the Arts Award.[13]

In 2014, Morrison published parts of an epic polemical poem-in-progress, Odour of Devon Violet.[14] The poem -attributed to 'Ivor Mortise', a fictitious alter-ego- satirises contemporary austerity culture using the leitmotiv of Devon Violet, a cheap perfume particularly popular during the 1930s and 1940s, as an olfactory metaphor for the retro-rhetoric, and synthetic nostalgia (a sort of austerity nostalgia or 'nosterity'/ 'austalgia', as Morrison refers to it) for a pre-welfare state Britain, promulgated by politicians.

In 2015, Lapwing Publications (Belfast) published Morrison's volume Shadows Waltz Haltingly.[15] A deeply personal collection, it is a departure from his more socio-political poetry of recent years.

Tan Raptures[16][17] - described by the Church Times as having "fluency, wit, and passion"[18] was released in April 2017. Morrison describes the long title poem as an ‘Audenic dialectic’ in verse; it is also a Socialist-Catholic polemic in opposition to the welfare regimen of ex-Secretary of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Iain Duncan Smith.[19]

Morrison is editor of left-wing international literary webzine, The Recusant, which he founded in 2007. In August 2010 Morrison compiled, contributed to and edited a collection of political poems entitled Emergency Verse - Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State[20] (Caparison) endorsed by Caroline Lucas MP[21] This was followed in 2012 by a second, significantly bigger anti-austerity anthology, The Robin Hood Book – Verse Versus Austerity (patron Mark Serwotka of the PCS Union).[22] Morrison started up another polemical poetry site, Militant Thistles, in 2015.[23]

Morrison's poetry and monographs have appeared in journals including Culture Matters, Disability Arts Online, The International Times, The London Magazine, The Morning Star, Stand, and The Whistling Shade.[24][25][26][27][28][29][30]

His poetry has been awarded grants from the Arts Council, and a John Masefield Memorial Trust Award from the Society of Authors. Morrison has been a recipient of a Royal Literary Fund grant since 2014.[31]

Publications
  • Poems - Don't Think of Tigers - The Do Not Press, 2001
  • Giving Light - Waterloo Press, 2003
  • Feed a Cold, Starve a Fever - Sixties Press, 2004
  • Clocking-in for the Witching Hour - Sixties Press, 2004
  • Picaresque, a play for voices - Survivors' Press, 2005
  • The Mansion Gardens - Paula Brown Publishing, 2006
  • Picaresque - The Pirates of Circumstance - chipmunkapublishing, 2007-8
  • A Tapestry of Absent Sitters - Waterloo Press, 2009
  • Keir Hardie Street - Smokestack Books, 2010
  • Captive Dragons / The Shadow Thorns - Waterloo Press, 2011
  • Blaze a Vanishing/ The Tall Skies - Waterloo Press, Jan 2013
  • Blaze a Vanishing - Revisited - Caparison/World Literature Today, Nov 2013
  • Odour of Devon Violet[32] - 2014
  • Shadows Waltz Haltingly[33] - Lapwing Publications, Belfast, 2015
  • Tan Raptures[34] - Smokestack Books/ Dufour Editions, 2017
  • Shabbigentile[35] - Culture Matters, 2019
  • Gum Arabic[36] - Cyberwit, India/US, 2020
  • Anxious Corporals[37] - Smokestack Books, 2021

Awards and grants
  • Bread & Roses Poetry Award 2018[38]

References
  1. James, Gordon (1 September 2010). "Fighting public sector cuts with poetry" – via www.theguardian.com.
  2. "The London Magazine - October / November 2013 - Inpress Books". Inpress Books. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
  3. "About Alan Morrison..." Alan Morrison. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  4. "Interview with Alan Morrison (part 1)". The Sociological Imagination. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
  5. http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/keir_hardie_street_alan_morrison_i020821.aspx Archived 12 January 2011 at the Wayback Machine Keir Hardie Street, Inpress Books
  6. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 1 November 2011. Retrieved 10 August 2017.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. Alan Morrison, Keir Hardie Street, Smokestack Books, 2010, pp. 9-42
  8. "Diary: Dec 17". 17 December 2005 – via www.theguardian.com.
  9. Alan Morrison, Captive Dragons / The Shadow Thorns, Waterloo Press, 2011, Back cover
  10. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 5 August 2017.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  11. "Submitted Literature - Madness and Literature Network". www.madnessandliterature.org.
  12. ""Blaze a Vanishing" by Alan Morrison". World Literature Today. 17 October 2013. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
  13. Alan Morrison, Blaze a Vanishing and The Tall Skies, Waterloo Press, 2013, p. iv
  14. http://www.odourofdevonviolet.com/
  15. "Poetry: Alan Morrison: Shadows Waltz Haltingly and the Shadow of Huntington's - disability arts online". www.disabilityartsonline.org.uk. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
  16. "Rapturous riposte to the austerity era". Morning Star. 4 May 2017. Archived from the original on 29 July 2017. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
  17. "Staff Picks - Tan Raptures - Inpress Books". Inpress Books. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  18. "Six books from contemporary poets". Church Times. 1 June 2018. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  19. Alan Morrison, Tan Raptures, Smokestack Books, 2017, Back cover
  20. James, Gordon (1 September 2010). "Fighting public sector cuts with poetry". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
  21. [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/01/poetry-welfare-cuts-alan-morrison
  22. Alan Morrison, The Robin Hood Book – Verse Versus Austerity, Caparison, 2012, pp. xiii-xiv
  23. "Militant Thistles". Militant Thistles. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  24. "Contributors". Culture Matters. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  25. "Shadows Waltz Haltingly by Alan Morrison". Disability Arts Online. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  26. "Review: The Robin Hood Book: 131 Poets in Support of a Robin Hood Tax". Disability Arts Online. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  27. "Unspoken Companions: Poetry and Unemployment". The International Times. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  28. "Reoccupying Auden country". The International Times. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  29. "Rapturous riposte to the austerity era". Morning Star. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  30. "Bluebells". Whistling Shade. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  31. http://www.alanmorrison.co.uk/#/grants-awards-nominations/4594135828
  32. http://www.odourofdevonviolet.com/
  33. https://sites.google.com/a/lapwingpublications.com/lapwing-store/alan-morrison
  34. https://smokestack-books.co.uk/book.php?book=133
  35. http://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/shop-support/our-publications/item/2981-shabbigentile
  36. https://www.cyberwit.net/publications/1402
  37. https://smokestack-books.co.uk/book.php?book=194
  38. https://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/poetry/item/2883-kipling-buildings

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