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Mervyn Morris Poems added to The Poetry Archive

Selected poems by Mervyn Morris, internationally acclaimed poet and retired Professor of Creative Writing and West Indian Literature, UWI, Mona are now accessible to audiences worldwide on the Poetry Archive, the world’s premier online collection of recordings of poets reading their work.

The Poetry Archive aims to bring the widest possible audience to the fullest possible range of English-language poetry being published around the world, and to complement that poetry with educational material of value both to the specialist and to the general reader.

Poets are chosen for inclusion by a panel under the Chairmanship of Andrew Motion, one of the founders of the Archive. The selection process is guided by advice from a large number of writers and critics, many of whom have specialist knowledge of particular regions or styles, and the panel's choices are determined by several factors: by the wish to demonstrate the variety of poetry being published, by the wish to make a selection which demonstrates the excellence of every kind of that variety, and by the availability of the necessary funding.

As an introduction to the hour-long reading which can be purchased online, Morris has chosen a dozen poems which can be accessed without charge.  According to Poetry Archive, “they give some flavour of his marvellous facility and range. The Creole comicality of ‘Peelin Orange’ dissolving into bitter resignation, the surprising epigrammatic depth of ‘Walk Good’ and the wonderful Caribbean Garden of Eden hinted at in ‘Eve’ – these wryly amuse where ‘Cabal’ appals, with its conversational cruelty, a bleak morality tale about cronies and corruption. Among the rest, ‘Casanova’ is a perfect exposure of the vanity and self-delusion mingling in the damaged heart-throb, while ‘The Day My Father Died’ speaks of death’s finality and the birth of grief, a new life for the living to bear, especially so for the poet’s mother. Morris reads his work beautifully, with memorable clarity, in a warm, richly hued voice, colloquial, declamatory, always attuned to music as well as meaning.”

From 1966 until 2002, Mervyn Morris was on the staff of The University of the West Indies, Mona. His books include ‘Is English We Speaking’ and other essays and I been there, sort of: New and Selected Poems.


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