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In 2008 A Book of Lives was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, and won the Scottish Arts Council Sundial Book of the Year.

It includes the poem Morgan was commissioned to write for the opening of the new Scottish parliament building in 2004; the sequence 'Planet Wave' which moves from pre-history to the future much like his earlier Sonnets from Scotland (Mariscat, 1984) but extends further in both time and space; 'Gorgo and Beau', a dialogue between a cancer cell and a healthy cell; and 'Love and a Life', a moving sequence of 50 love poems.

"If we want a late style of solemnity or grandeur, we are not going to get it. Life remains full of adventure. 'My First Octopus' involves a toilet hole on a Turkish train - hard to imagine many other Grand Old Poets writing this one. But Morgan has always had the greatest imaginative reach. In this book he presents a sequence, 'Planet Wave', commissioned by the Cheltenham Jazz Festival, which spans - this is classic Morgan territory - from 20 billion BC ('there was a bang and it was big') through to the destruction of the Twin Towers and beyond. Here he has a godly voice that has seen all but is not weary, never cynical. He is not without opinion: 'The shock-waves were a tocsin for the overweening imperium.' But 9/11 was not the end of history. We go on, through to AD2300. Morgan retains a belief in the future, of further, onward, better."

Kathleen Jamie, The Guardian, 3 March 2007

A Book Of Lives

2000s

In 2008 A Book of Lives was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, and won the Scottish Arts Council Sundial Book of the Year.

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