Open Book X #EdwinMorgan100

In March 2021, Open Book will be celebrating the Edwin Morgan Centenary with a ‘Morgan Month’, sharing Edwin Morgan’s poems with their groups across Scotland. With copies of the Edwin Morgan Twenties, videos from our Hold Hands Among the Atoms channel and access to new works created by artists involved in our The Second Life grants programme, Morgan Month promises to be an opportunity to engage with the life and work of Edwin Morgan from a new perspective.

From Founding Directors Marjorie Lotfi and Claire Urquhart:

‘Open Book is thrilled to be working with the Edwin Morgan Trust to deliver a month-long celebration of Edwin Morgan’s work to conclude his centenary year. Morgan’s poetry has been a long-standing favourite of many of our groups over the years, so we’re delighted to be able to take a whole month to look more closely and renew our many connections to it. 

In an ordinary month, Open Book facilitates over 150 Open Book sessions, some of which are shared reading (like a traditional book group except that all the reading is done aloud during the session), while others add some creative writing in response to the texts being discussed. 

During Morgan Month, in each of our sessions, we’ll be reading and responding to poems both written by Morgan and by other authors inspired by his work. We’ll also be working with our groups to engage with and respond to some of the Second Life Projects realised with the support of the Edwin Morgan Trust. Some of these sessions are open to the public and others are closed community-based sessions (such as those supporting refugees and migrants, individuals living with domestic violence and homelessness, and prisoners). We’d be delighted to welcome any newcomers to Open Book to join our public sessions to help us celebrate the work of Edwin Morgan – whether they’ve known and loved his work for decades, or are coming to it for the first time. Details of the both the open shared reading and creative writing sessions and how to book them are on our website openbookreading.com/unbound. In the creative writing sessions, we’ll be reading and discussing Morgan’s poems before responding to them in writing, sometimes even as a collective group response guided by our experienced Open Book Lead Reader. We hope we’ll be able to share some of that work with you when it’s written!

More than anything, we’re looking forward to marking the end of this year of celebration by connecting with Morgan.   Regardless of the kind of group they join in with, for some of our participants it will be the rekindling of an existing love for and connection to his work, while for others they’ll be discovering the relevance of his words and ideas to their lives for the first time.’

Photo credit: Karere Wedekind