CAROL ANN DUFFY
The poet on her fellow poet Pete Morgan
Who is he?
Pete Morgan, a professional poet, was born in 1939 in Leigh, Lancashire, and now lives in Beverley, East Yorkshire, with his wife, Kate. They have two children. At 16, he was living alone in London – sticking his anonymous poems to the trees on Hampstead Heath. Two years later, he was serving as an infantry platoon commander in West Germany. In 1964, he became a pacifist and resigned his commission. He moved to Edinburgh and began to publish his poems and give public readings.
What does he do?
His first full-length collection, The Grey Mare Being the Better Steed, appeared from Secker & Warburg in 1973. It was followed by The Spring Collection (1979) and One Greek Alphabet (1980). A Winter Visitor (1983) celebrated the North Yorkshire fishing village of Robin Hoods Bay. He also had a BBC TV series called A Voyage Between Two Seas. In 1984, he was diagnosed as having a tumour on the brain. Although it was benign and he made a full recovery, he was largely forgotten on the publishing front. He is a member of the Arvon Foundation Council, a charity that runs residential creative writing centres.
Why do I admire him?
Poetry, like a battleground, is strewn with forgotten heroes – dead poets no longer read by the living, pulped poets, out-of-print poets, poets captured alive by advertising – and those of us lucky enough to make it across to the other side should remember them. When I was a young, unpublished poet, Pete Morgan was one of most inspirational performers of poetry around, an influence on poets like Kit Wright and Liz Lochhead, who in turn influenced those younger than themselves. There are famous poets of my generation and younger who have no idea of the debt they owe to Pete Morgan. His poems are dramatic, formally superb, funny, toughly tender, lyrical and never less than entertaining. Ted Hughes was a fan of his. As far as I know he is currently out of print and it is a bloody scandal.
INTERVIEW BY CHARLOTTE CRIPPS
Carol Ann Duffy |
