Alan Morrison
The poet
Alan Morrison's poetry has been called powerful, unconventional, strongly polemical, socialist, anarchic, full of passion, electric and even "a bit frightening." What all of his critics agree on is that, at the relatively young age of 32, Morrison has attained the Holy Grail of poetic endeavour: a strong, distinctive voice. In the words of one critic, Morrison, in his latest collection The Mansion Gardens, "has come to sharply-focused grips with himself without any striving for effect, telling it like he truly feels it is."
Alan Morrison -- to tell it like it truly is -- is a damned fine poet. When you read his work, you will see why he has won the Asham Trust's prize, been nominated for the T. S. Eliot Prize, and been published in Don't Think of Tigers (The Do-Not Press) and The Real Survivors' Anthology (Sixties Press), and in journals worldwide, including, Aesthetica, Aireings, Illuminations, The London Magazine, Poetry Salzburg Review, Pennine Platform and The Penniless Press. His chapbooks and collections include Giving Light (Waterloo Press), Clocking-in For the Witching Hour (Sixties Press), Feed a Cold, Starve a Fever (Sixties Press) and The Mansion Gardens (Paula Brown). His acclaimed Picaresque: A Play for Voices has been performed at such venues as the Poetry Cafe and the George Bernard Shaw Theatre, RADA.
In part one of our interview with Morrison, we ask him about his poetic origins, his inspirations and his views on poetry writing and publishing today. As in his poetry, in his answers here Morrison does not shy away from telling it like he truly feels it is -- even if he ruffles some feathers. In part two of the interview (forthcoming this summer), he will discuss specific poems in his latest collection.
The interview - Part One
SV: Your newest collection, The Mansion Gardens, is arranged chronologically -- so we can assume that the first poems in the collection go back to the very beginning of your life as a poet. Do you recall your first original poem?
AM: That's going back some years. But if I take time to reflect, the moment, or a series of moments jumbled together emerge cloudily… I seem to remember I was probably about 17 or so when I first started to write properly, though more lyrics than poems, and I'm slightly ashamed to admit my first inspirers were not so much poets as songwriters: the likes of John Lennon, Kate Bush, Matt Johnson (The The) and in particular, Paul Weller (mainly from The Jam period). One of his song lyrics, ‘Tales from the Riverbank', struck a particular chord with me at the time, fitting my surroundings quite well too, living in a rustic setting I was then. I remember his lines, ‘Bring you a tale from the pastel fields/ Where we played when we were young/ This is a tale from the water meadows/ Trying to bring some hope into your heart', and ‘True is the dream/ Mixed with nostalgia…' certainly inspired some of my earliest scribbles, in which I tried to evoke my sense of isolation in the countryside and the conflict I felt between its timelessness and the crushing demands of modernity in the wider world; the struggle to stick to high ideals in the face of poverty and the whitewash of Thatcherism. I suppose I originally wanted to put my words to music, but seeing as I hadn't been brought up with instruments, only with literature, this soon seemed rather pointless. It came to a point when I suddenly realised that words could be instruments in themselves; that they could convey a sense of music in their own right – and that's when I first truly discovered the immense power of poetry. For me, the musical element to poetry is an absolute imperative, and without it, the words become staid and brittle.