The Play of Gilgamesh

Edwin Morgans verse play translation of the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh brings an ancient story to life in a supple, vigorous idiom that moves easily between ritual, comedy and moments of intense beauty. Here a god-king, a great city builder, learns the timeless truth that the only immortality lies in what will be remembered and recorded of his actions. Gilgameshs quest takes him, and the audience, on a journey through a world that is both mythic and familiar, inhabited by terrifying demons and disappeared political prisoners, by gods and singing transvestites and a Glaswegian jester and by Enkidu, the beloved child of nature who dies of a virus in the blood, through whom Gilgamesh learns to understand the meaning of loss.

"Edwin Morgan is the most dynamic, brilliant, free-wheeling poet around, endlessly accessible and inventive, glorious refreshment."  —The Scotsman

Born in Glasgow in 1920, EDWIN MORGAN served for six years in the Middle East with the Royal Army Medical Corps and on his return completed his Masters degree at Glasgow University. He became Professor of English in 1975, retiring as Professor Emeritus in 1980.
Morgan is an adept linguist, particularly in Russian, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Hungarian. He has received a Queens Gold Award for Poetry, the Royal Bank of Scotland Book of the Year Award in 1983, the Soros Translation Award (New York) 1985 and many other prizes. Virtual and Other Realities won the Stakis Prize for the Scottish Writer of the Year 1998.
He has written concrete and visual poetry, opera libretti and collaborated with jazz saxophonist Tommy Smith to put his work into music. Morgans work is renowned for its internationalism, darting from Europe into space, but always coming to earth in Glasgow.