Biography
I’m a native of Mississippi, and while I’ve lived in a number of different places, still consider myself primarily a Mississippian. After finishing university, I moved to the UK where I pursued graduate work both in poetry, in Edinburgh, and in archaeology, in Cambridge. My heart is in poetry, but I also work in a variety of other genres: fiction, nonfiction, plays, journalism, travel writing, and criticism.
I have two careers, one as a writer and the other as an academic researcher, examining the cultural and environmental systems of this world. These days I call New Orleans home, but as an avid traveler, I’m extremely fortunate – and grateful – to have a career which keeps me packing suitcases on a regular basis, exploring and learning about places I never could have dreamed of as a child. This summer, I’ll be taking up a position as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh, which will be a homecoming on two fronts: not just back to the UK, but also to the city and university where I first studied poetry full-time, a wonderful year which first exposed me to the richness of Scottish culture and literary life. I’m excited to return; I like to think my Scottish ancestors – my grandfather was a Wicke – would be proud.
I follow a few simple rules: work as hard as possible, take care of other people, and love what you do. That, and learn something new every day. Whatever comes after that are just details.
The Interview
So where did the book begin for you, how did the book come to be written?
The book took shape as a collection of letters – a litany – from a lover to his beloved. It began years ago, fell off for a time, and then – in a set of circumstances that still elude understanding, and which form a core part of the book – rekindled again not long ago. Without saying exactly what ‘happened’ after that, I will say this: that the book is, at heart, a tribute, a celebration of the vicissitudes and triumphs of love, and I wouldn’t have it taken any other way.
What was going on in your life while you were writing it?
In short, everything imaginable. University studies, graduate work, moving over to (and back from) a new country, changes in careers and in geographies, the gain and loss of friends and family, sickness and death, the list could go on forever. Only some of these biographical aspects are reflected in the book, however – rather, the poems focus mainly on the essential experience, the relationship between the lovers, the I-and-thou. Anything else that entered in was, as we say down here in New Orleans, lagniappe. Something extra.
What do you think were the real driving elements within the book — the things that moved it all forward for you?
The poems in Litany are love poems. More than anything else, they come from trying to understand love in all its many and complicated forms. I won’t profess to being a perfect lover, either in life or in the book – some of the poems are angry, others fearful, still more are as full of confusion and hurt as they are wonder and tenderness and passion. The experience of love is all of these things and so much more, and if I was able to capture even a glimpse of its dimensions, or offer a cartography of a landscape that, while we are in it, we each must discover for ourselves, then I’ll be satisfied with what the work was able to achieve.
How long did it take to bring it all together?
The poems in the book cover a span of about ten years.
Who was important to you in developing your writing life?
More people than I could ever hope to name. My family first and foremost, to whom I owe so much, but my friends, peers, teachers, and even my students are also continual sources of inspiration and gratitude. Not a day at the desk goes by that I’m not indebted in some way to someone in the community. Looking back, my earliest inspirations in poetry were Elizabeth Bishop and Norman MacCaig; more recent influences include poets such as Kathleen Jamie, David Harsent, Terrance Hayes, and a dear friend and collaborator, Helen Mort.
That said, inspiration from other poets and writers is one thing, but I have always felt a deep resonance with the experiences and insights of other professions: artists, musicians, athletes, and architects, just to name a few. (One of my favorite websites, sadly now defunct, is Rodcorp’s “How We Work”.) The old Scots word for poet is makar – maker, builder – and in deference to this responsibility to the art, I always strive for a sense of having made in poems something real, tactile, and fully-formed, in which all the parts work together, and nary a stray cog or spring is out of place. I do love wildness and messiness in poetry, and I love working in free verse, but form has always held a special place in my heart: my first chapbook, Coronary, is a letterpress collection of sonnets inspired by my father’s heart attack last year.
(link to Rodcorp: http://rodcorp.typepad.com/rodcorp/2004/12/how_we_work.html.)
Where do you think you’ll go to next in your writing — what are you working on now?
Before going to Edinburgh this summer, where my work will be primarily scholarship, I’m in the rare and precious position of tying off loose ends. It’s strange, but nice, like a layover in a country you never expected to visit. I’ve just released a novel, The Bella, set at the United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen, so I’ve been supporting that, and I’m finishing up a handful of short fiction and nonfiction pieces as well.
As for poetry, I’ve just completed the first draft of a new collection begun at a residency program here in New Orleans; this collection, entitled Ecotone, gives voice and presence to an endangered landscape – a bottomland hardwood forest – under threat from environmental change and invasive species. I’ve always believed that the creative and critical aspects of our brains have much to say to one another, and this collection is an opportunity to demonstrate that belief. Following my work in Scotland, I’ll be returning to New Orleans next autumn with two main projects in mind: to begin a human rights and advocacy campaign, and to begin work on the next novel – about which, I’m afraid to say, I’m not allowed to say a single word.
May 28
We started off the way we always had:
your head upon my chest, arm across
my lap, you murmuring something ahead
of being silenced with a kiss. At a loss
for what to say back I had to find
something else to do with my mouth,
and there yours was, again, at mine.
Where had you disappeared to—south?
East? My favorite points on the compass,
but had I asked which one you’d chosen
you’d have run as far north, to the ice,
as possible, somewhere past cold to frozen.
To avoid what? Being chased, or worse, found?
I might as well have bent to kiss the wind.
Discover more about Benjamin Morris
Link to web sites
- http://benjaminalanmorris.com.
- https://www.facebook.com/benji.morris (I’m quitting Facebook soon, but there’s no harm in linking now.)
- https://twitter.com/#!/bentjulep
Links to work online
- “Seven Unstageable Plays” and “Skin,” Horizon Review issue 5
http://www.saltpublishing.com/horizon/issues/05/text/morris_ben_two_poems.htm - “The Treehouse,” Horizon Review issue 4
http://www.saltpublishing.com/horizon/issues/04/text/morris_benjamin_1poem.htm - “Heat Wave,” 2006 National Poetry Competition commended poem http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/competitions/npc/06archivenpc
- “Highway 90” and “The Lost Road”, in field issue 4
http://www.field-journal.org/uploads/file/2011%20Volume%204/field-journal_Ecology.pdf - Poems in various editions of The Mays anthologies
http://www.amazon.com/Mays-18-Writing-Photography-Cambridge/dp/0902240404 - “With Words and With Pretty,” reportage in The Rumpus
http://therumpus.net/2011/04/with-words-and-with-pretty-super-sunday-2011/ - “Lines of Defence,” essay in two parts in Dark Mountain
Part 1: http://www.dark-mountain.net/wordpress/2010/09/07/thin-brown-line/
Part 2: http://www.dark-mountain.net/wordpress/2010/11/02/lines-of-defence-ii-the-invisible-enemy/
[...] A brief interview is up at Salt Publishing, alongside the other shortlisted poets for the Crashaw Prize — they’re all such brilliant poets, it’s an honor to share the space with them. [...]