Born in New York City, John Morgan won the Hatch Prize for Lyric Poetry at Harvard and holds an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa, where he was awarded the Academy of American Poets’ Prize. In 1976, he moved with his family to Fairbanks, Alaska, to teach Creative Writing at the University of Alaska. He currently divides his time between Fairbanks and Bellingham, Washington.
His books include THE BONE-DUSTER, THE ARCTIC HERD and WALKING PAST MIDNIGHT, as well as four chap-books. Most recently, SPEAR-FISHING ON THE CHATANIKA: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS was published by Salmon Poetry and was featured on the Poetry Daily website (7-2-10). A new collection of essays, FORMS OF FEELING: POETRY IN OUR LIVES, is also available from Salmon. A short selection from this book was featured on the website Extract(s). Morgan's book-length poem, RIVER OF LIGHT: A CONVERSATION WITH KABIR, is forthcoming from the University of Alaska Press. Based on a raft trip down the Copper River, it will have artwork by the distinguished Alaskan artist, Kesler Woodward. Archives of the Air, a collection of shorter work is forthcoming from Salmon.
Morgan's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Prairie Schooner, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and many other magazines, and in more than twenty anthologies. Winner of the New York Poetry Center’s Discovery Award, Morgan received two writing fellowships from the Alaska State Council on the Arts, a Rasmuson Artist Fellowship, a Bread Loaf scholarship and a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. In 2009, he served as the first writer-in-residence at Denali National Park.
Annie Dillard writes that his poems “are strong and full of carefully controlled feeling. They are tender and precise evocations of the moral and sensory life of man.”
His books include THE BONE-DUSTER, THE ARCTIC HERD and WALKING PAST MIDNIGHT, as well as four chap-books. Most recently, SPEAR-FISHING ON THE CHATANIKA: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS was published by Salmon Poetry and was featured on the Poetry Daily website (7-2-10). A new collection of essays, FORMS OF FEELING: POETRY IN OUR LIVES, is also available from Salmon. A short selection from this book was featured on the website Extract(s). Morgan's book-length poem, RIVER OF LIGHT: A CONVERSATION WITH KABIR, is forthcoming from the University of Alaska Press. Based on a raft trip down the Copper River, it will have artwork by the distinguished Alaskan artist, Kesler Woodward. Archives of the Air, a collection of shorter work is forthcoming from Salmon.
Morgan's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Prairie Schooner, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and many other magazines, and in more than twenty anthologies. Winner of the New York Poetry Center’s Discovery Award, Morgan received two writing fellowships from the Alaska State Council on the Arts, a Rasmuson Artist Fellowship, a Bread Loaf scholarship and a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. In 2009, he served as the first writer-in-residence at Denali National Park.
Annie Dillard writes that his poems “are strong and full of carefully controlled feeling. They are tender and precise evocations of the moral and sensory life of man.”
