Goldsmiths - University of London

Professor Blake Morrison

BA in English Literature Nottingham University; MA in English Literature McMaster University; PhD on 1950s British Poetry and Fiction, University College, London

Teaching

I teach the Life Writing option on the MA in Creative Writing, and supervise students on the MA and PhD creative writing programmes.

Areas of supervision

• Contemporary fiction and poetry
• Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney
• Life Writing and memoirs
• Adaptation

Grants & awards

• Eric Gregory Award
• Somerset Maugham Award
• Dylan Thomas prize
• E.M.Forster Award (American Academy of Arts and Letters)
• Waterstone’s/Esquire Non-Fiction Award
• J.R. Ackerley Prize
• Fellow of Royal Society of Literature
• Honorary degrees/fellowships at UCL and at the universities of Greenwich, Bradford Plymouth and Nottingham.
• Co-investigator for AHRC-funded ‘Fractured Narratives’ project at the Goldsmiths Pinter Centre

Professional activities

Formerly

• Vice President, English PEN
• Member of Arts Council Literature Panel
• Chair of Poetry Book Society
• Board of Society of Authors

Currently

• Board of George Orwell Trust
• Patron of The Reader Organisation
• Patron of Ways with Words

Television and video output

• And When Did You Last See Your Father? (2007)
• Bicycle Thieves (1995)
  
• Little Angels, Little Devils (1994)
• Flying Eye: The Great Divide (BBC, 1997)
• Night Mail II (1987)
  

Research interests

Blake is a poet, novelist and journalist, best known for two family memoirs and a study of the Bulger case, As If. He has also translated and adapted plays, written libretti and critical studies, and edited anthologies of contemporary writing.

Selected publications

Books (Fiction & Non-Fiction)

As If (Granta, 1997; Afterword, 2011)

The Last Weekend (Chatto & Windus, 2010)

South of the River (Chatto & Windus, 2007)

And When Did You Last See Your Father? (Granta, 1993; Afterword, 2007)

Things My Mother Never Told Me (Chatto & Windus, 2002)

The Justification of Johann Gutenberg (Vintage, 2001)

Too True (Granta, 1999)

Pendle Witches. Poems with etchings by Paula Rego (Enitharmon, 1996)

The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper (Chatto & Windus, 1987)

Dark Glasses (Chatto & Windus, 1984)

Seamus Heaney (Methuen, 1982)

The Movement: English Poetry and Fiction of the 1950s (Oxford University Press, 1980)

Plays and Libretti

We Are Three Sisters (Nick Hern, 2011)

Lisa's Sex Strike, new version of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, performed by Northern Broadsides (Sept-Nov 2007)

Elephant and Castle, libretto for opera performed at Aldeburgh Festival (June 2007)

The Man with Two Gaffers, new version of Goldoni's stage-play Il Servitore di Due Padroni, performed by Northern Broadsides (Aug-Dec 2006)

'G', libretto for opera performed in Mainz (Jan-March 2002)

Oedipus/Antigone (Northern Broadsides, 2003)

Dr Ox's Experiment, libretto for opera performed at Coliseum (June 1998)

The Cracked Pot (Samuel French, 1996)

Edited Books

New Writing 12, co-edited with Jane Rogers and Diran Adebayo (Picador, 2003)

Mind Readings, co-edited with Fay Weldon and Michele Roberts (Minerva, 1996)

The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry, co-edited with Andrew Motion (Penguin, 1982)

Selected Articles

'The Reading Cure', Guardian Review (Jan. 2008)

'Black Marks and Blue Pencils' (inaugural Goldsmiths Lecture), Guardian Yearbook (2005)

'Portraits', essay for the catalogue of BP Portrait Award 2004 (National Portrait Gallery Publications, 2004), pp. 8-16.

'When I Last Saw Him', Granta 87 (Autumn 2004), pp. 281-290.

'Song Lyrics', Arete, no. 5 (Spring/Summer 2001), pp. 107-117.

'The Filial Art: A Reading of Contemporary British Poetry', The Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 17 (1987), pp. 179-217.

Introductory Essays

D. H. Lawrence,Lady Chatterley's Lover (Vintage, 2011), pp. vii-xiv.

A Little Aloud: An Anthology (Chatto & Windus, 2010), pp. 1-5.

D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (Penguin Classics, 2006), pp. xi-xxvi.

James Agee, A Death in the Family (Penguin, 2006), pp. v-xii.

James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Penguin, 2006), pp. vii-xii.

The Gospel According to St John (Canongate, 1998), pp. vii-xvi.

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (Penguin, 1996), pp. vii-xxiv.