In March 2020 Spec Books proudly collaborated with The Edwin Morgan Trust & Glasgow University, to create ‘The Edwin Morgan Centenary Collection’ guest edited by Colin Herd.
BELOW: Check out our submission guidelines and the images used to inspire the project. Please note submissions are closed :)
Including work from …
Eileen Farrelly
Eloise Birtwhistle
Liz Lochhead
Samuel Tongue
Katie Veitch
Lesley Capitanchik
Rhys Trimble
Sean Wai Keung
Glenna Jones
A C Clarke
Gaar Adams
Beag Horn
Molly McLachlan
Mike Ferguson
Lucy Cash
Estelle Price
Ellen MacAskill
Helen Boden
Scott Norval
Gillian Dawson
William Bonar
Angie Spoto
Nat Raha
Leyla Josephine
R.A.Davis
Shirley Bell
Kate Lynch
Nuala Watt
Julie Laing
Mairi Jack
Eleanor Capaldi
Laura Bissell
K. Patrick
Lesley Morrison
Andrés Ordorica
Neil Thomson
Heather Middleton
Beth Cochrane
Jim Nelson
Sheila Scott
Greg Thomas
J L Williams
Henry Bell
Dr Russell Jones
Jane Aldous
Seth Crook
Michael Black
Tessa Berring
Kathrine Sowerby
Maria Sledmere
N.T. Smith
Lizzie Eldridge
Kieron Baird
Stephen Watt
Sarah Dolan
Ruby McCann
Ian Macartney
Shehzar Doja
Finola Scott
Katherine Mackinnon
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Before he published his first collection of poetry, Edwin Morgan made a series of visually arresting, playful, dynamic scrapbooks. A queer visual diary, a catalogue of images, and a surreal bricolage, the scrapbooks were a resource and a testing ground as Morgan developed his distinctively experimental and anti-orthodox poetics.
‘The Edwin Morgan Centenary Collection’ will be filled with poetry and short fiction, written by YOU, inspired by Edwin Morgan’s scrap books which he donated to Glasgow University Library.
For our submissions, some themes you might want to tune into are Scottishness, Queerness, Collaboration, Intergalactic Space - but one of the exciting things about the scrapbooks is they take you in unexpected directions!
If you are unable to attend the workshop or visit the library you can see some pages from Edwin’s scrap books below or click this link!
Flicker: https://tinyurl.com/sgrv3jz
A note from Robyn Marsack of The Edwin Morgan Trust:
(SUBMISSIONS CLOSED)
Perhaps you kept a scrapbook when you were younger, or still keep one. What does it mean to you? For Edwin Morgan (1920-2010), one of Scotland’s most inventive and curious poets, his scrapbooks were a repository for the interests, the questions, even the humour that were sometimes difficult to share with others. They were a private, crowded space of text and images, carefully composed by a boy - then a man - living at home with his parents, with his passion for architecture and design, for all things Russian, for space travel, for odd headlines, for other men… They represent a hidden life that ranged, like his poetry, from Glasgow to Saturn.
The Edwin Morgan Trust is delighted to have this opportunity to partner with Speculative Books in opening up some pages of this endlessly fascinating collection to writers who would like to use them as springboards for their own speculations, in prose or poetry. While the actual scrapbooks can be accessed at Glasgow University Library’s Special Collections, there is a limit to what can be shown online because of copyright restrictions. Besides the sample sheets here, there is a set of pages with illuminating commentary available on Flickr:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/uofglibrary/5366846190/in/album-72157623915217656/lightbox/
Also some are shown here: https://universityofglasgowlibrary.wordpress.com/2015/01/16/edwin-morgan-scrapbooks-project/
