Every time you sit down to write is an act of faith. Nothing is real, then everything is.
Poetry
Beast of the World
(Finishing Line Press, 2023) Part love song, part eulogy, part interrogation and resistance, Chris Morgan's poetry chapbook, Beast of the World, chronicles a vividly incisive exploration of biosphere in decline. These thirty-five poems alternately scintillate with erotic engagement, grief of loss, and moments of transcendent connection. This is an urgent little book of psalms for our time, one in which Morgan articulates psychic landscapes as inextricable from the physical world. Morgan taps veins of hope in these lyrical, declamatory poems as well, discovering a collective yearning in the Eremocene Age that include private celebrations of vital intimacies. The "Beast" roaming this remarkable first collection by an important new voice is not only animal and machine but the human heart in its full-throated, fractured cry. R.S.Thomas (Manchester University Press) "Morgan writes with keen critical insight on the controversial Welshman considered to be one of the leading poets of the twentieth century. This is the first book to treat Thomas's entire oeuvre and will prove to be an indispensable guide and companion to the complete poems. The book...treats Thomas's work as a complex and interrelated whole, as a body of work that comprises a single artistic achievement, and assesses that achievement within the context of an array of literary figures from Montaigne to Seamus Heaney and Wallace Stevens. R.S. Thomas proves invaluable as a beginner's introduction to the poet, as a student's guide to critical thinking about the poet's work, and as a provocative new step in scholarly studies." (Book Jacket Review) "Morgan’s outlook is one of immense depth, curious multiplicity and critical exuberance. It is on deity and environment, however, that Morgan’s critical brilliance first comes into view, and his exploration of the relevance of pure and applied science to the work of R. S. Thomas is revelatory." (New Welsh Review, 63)
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FictionEverywhere the Water is a collection of stories in which characters collide with the surprising pain of things as they are. For each of Morgan's complex characters such suffering ultimately becomes an opening toward the possibility of acceptance, wisdom, and hard-won joy. While the water that inspires and pervades these stories in various forms is actual and physical, it also functions as a kind of ineluctable grace that keeps reappearing in the midst of the struggles of these characters to become whole.
The settings and themes showcased in Morgan's collection range widely. A lonely man comes to terms with the love that once transformed his life (Field Work). On a remote barrier island, a girl confronts sharks and dreams of her dead mother (The Pelagic Life of Ebie McCray). A childless couple awakens at mid-life to their betrayals of one another and themselves (Ice). A boy is sent away to visit his estranged father and falls in love with the sea (A Short History of Violence). A man confronts the death of a childhood friend after revisiting the tree that symbolizes their early life together (Cherry). Six of the stories in Everywhere the Water have been previously published. "Pas de Deux" appeared in Gargoyle Magazine (Gargoyle Online #2) in July 2022. "A Short History of Violence" won the Mid-American Review Sherwood Anderson Fiction Prize 2018-2019. "Pablo Neruda and the Caffeinated Madness of Love" won the Tulip Tree Stories That Need to Be Told Contest (Passion Category) 2018. "Cherry" was awarded the Literal Latte K. Margaret Grossman Award for Fiction 2018. “Red Oleander” appeared in the Australian magazine White Horses ( 2013). "Feast of St. Francis” appeared in Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine (Volume 9, 2008). |
Creative Non-Fiction
Chris Morgan writes with singular passion and insight about coastal living, ocean ecosystems, and surfing. In 2008 North Carolina Literary Review published Morgan's seminal essay, “Mississippiensis and the Happiness of Thoreau,” a philosophical reflection on extinction and barrier island ecology. Much of his later writing in the genres of creative non-fiction, short fiction, and poetry, would draw deeply from the same fundamental themes of physical landscape, species endangerment, and the damages wrought by human domination and exploitation of the natural world.
Morgan’s imaginative reports on his wide-ranging ocean experiences have appeared in Delaware Beach Life, Ocean Magazine, White Horses, and Kurungabaa: A Journal of Literature, History and Ideas from the Sea. Morgan has been a regular contributor to the well-known Australian surfing journal White Horses. His essay “Surfing with Camus,” (Kurungabaa, 2011), is an exuberant exploration the Mediterranean roots of the French existentialist writer Albert Camus and his possible connection to the Hawaiian Sport of Kings. His elegiac essay “Listening to the Lions,” (Kurungabaa, 2012) is a deeply eloquent reflection on the life and untimely death of Hawaiian surfing legend and three time World Champion, Andy Irons (1978-2010). Morgan's lyrical and engaging non-fiction travel essays, "Canto del Camino" and "Border Crossing to Cymru" have appeared in Nowhere Magazine, with the latter selected for inclusion into the Nowhere Magazine Best of 2017 Print Annual edition. |