Annie Dillard writes that Morgan's poems “are strong and full of carefully controlled feeling. They are tender and precise evocations of the moral and sensory life of man.”

Michael Waters, editor of Contemporary American Poetry, calls him, "One of our finest poets."

Reviewing his recent collection Archives of the Air, Grace Cavalieri comments: "What a beautiful endeavor Morgan's life is, expanding our vision with colorful masterful work. Poetry that is of service."

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         Born in New York City, John Morgan studied with Robert Lowell and won the Hatch Prize for Lyric Poetry at Harvard. He 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 direct the Creative Writing program at the University of Alaska.  He currently divides his time between Fairbanks and Bellingham, Washington.

        Morgan's THE MOVING OUT: COLLECTED EARLY POEMS was recently published by the distinguished Irish press Salmon Poetry. His COLLECTED LATER POEMS will be out next year. ARCHIVES OF THE AIR, was published in 2015 also by Salmon Poetry and his book-length poem, RIVER OF LIGHT: A CONVERSATION WITH KABIR, was published in 2014 by the University of Alaska Press.  Based on a raft trip down the Copper River, it has artwork by the award winning Alaskan artist Kesler Woodward.  Morgan's earlier books include THE BONE-DUSTER, THE ARCTIC HERD and WALKING PAST MIDNIGHT, all winners in national competitions, as well as four chap-books.  SPEAR-FISHING ON THE CHATANIKA: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (Salmon Poetry, 2010) was featured on the Poetry Daily website.  A collection of essays, FORMS OF FEELING: POETRY IN OUR LIVES, is also available 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 Yale Review, and many other magazines, and in more than twenty anthologies. Winner of the New York Poetry Center’s Discovery Award, he 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.