1 Edwin Morgan’s love of literature began when he was a young child, and his early interest sparked a career that would take him all the way to becoming Scotland’s first Makar, or National Poet, of modern times.

Edwin Morgan in his younger days

Edwin Morgan in his younger days

2 Born in 1920, in the west end of Glasgow, his parents Stanley and Margaret were politically conservative and Presbyterian. His father was a director of a small firm of iron and steel merchants. Edwin attended the former Rutherglen Academy, and the High School of Glasgow.

3 While he was at Glasgow University, World War II broke out and, having registered as a conscientious objector, Edwin served in the Royal Army Medical Corps from 1940. He returned to university in 1946 and a year later graduated with first class honours before joining the staff of the English Literature Department, turning down a scholarship to Oxford. His studies had included French and Russian and, later in his career, he went on to become a prolific translator.

READ MORE: Glasgow fashion house which put city on style map - 120 years ago

4 Edwin first published under the name ‘Kaa’ in the High School of Glasgow Magazine, in 1936, and went on using that nom de plume in the Glasgow University Magazine, emerging as reviewer and translator under his own name in a variety of periodicals after the war. Morgan’s first book of poetry was published in 1952 and he went on to produce hundreds of sonnets, poems, sound poems, essays and translations. Glasgow figured strongly in his work. He worked as a lecturer at Glasgow until his retirement as a professor in 1980.

Photo: Edwin Morgan Trust

Photo: Edwin Morgan Trust

5 He was appointed Glasgow’s Poet Laureate in 1999 and used the public position to support gay rights, becoming an active supporter of the repeal of Section 28, criticising Church and business leaders for their support of the ‘Keep the Clause’ campaign. He won the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and the Weidenfeld Prize for Translation. Edwin died in 2010.