National Song by Morag Smith
Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice Winter 2024
Morag Smith's last poems are collected here in National Song. Her voice is untamed and passionate. Her work is forged from deep seams of raw experience and discovers resolution and beautiful purpose in the fine-tuning and exactitude of her craft. They bear witness to her rebellious soul, the long search for identity, belonging, and personhood. These poems wake us up. The magic of their language sparks out in cascades of illumination, hard-won truths, and joy mined out of darkness. National Song sings a healing for the wounds of life. These poems celebrate human kinship.
PRAISE for National Song:
These are fearless poems, forged in life's crucible. They put profound intellectual and emotional scrutiny on themes of identity, both personal and political. Morag Smith's work is rooted in her Cornish identity, yet is in active relation to the wider world, where the poet draws from a well of deep experience. There is much wry wit here, and joy in the world, despite life's struggle. - Penelope Shuttle
Morag Smith's poems erupt with enthusiasm and indignation and pain. Above all they express an unsentimental love of life and especially of Cornwall, tuning in again and again to a profound ancient music. Sometimes it's as if one of the Beats had landed at Falmouth, but there's also a more subtle vein of free verse that another poet from the Isle of Lewis, Iain Crichton Smith, would have recognised. In her shorter lyrics, Smith has an instinctive sense of just how much she should say. There's no superficial polish here, but a rough-cut and often moving sincerity. The poems glitter like Cornish granite. - John Greening
Morag Smith wrote as she lived her life with a warrior heart. Her passion and enthusiasm for all things poetry is so deeply missed by all of us at Falmouth Poetry Group who were also privileged to call her friend. - Rosie Hadden
Morag Smith can never be contained - warrior, revolutionary, nomad, climate activist - a restless, hugely empathetic poet releasing a stream / of dark words / into the light - Katrina Naomi>br>
ABOUT Morag Smith:
Morag Smith was born in Cornwall on the 24th March 1969. She grew up in Essex and on the Isle of Lewis. She had six children and nine grandchildren. She lived for a number of years as a New Age Traveller with her then young family. She returned to Cornwall and graduated from the University of Falmouth in 2019 with a First Class Degree in Creative Writing. She was a member of the Falmouth Poetry Group, and engaged widely with the poetry community in Cornwall. Morag was also an artist, a Zen Buddhist, and an activist, working notably with Clean Ocean Trust. She died on the 26th July, 2023, having received a terminal cancer diagnosis in March of that year.
PRAISE for National Song:
These are fearless poems, forged in life's crucible. They put profound intellectual and emotional scrutiny on themes of identity, both personal and political. Morag Smith's work is rooted in her Cornish identity, yet is in active relation to the wider world, where the poet draws from a well of deep experience. There is much wry wit here, and joy in the world, despite life's struggle. - Penelope Shuttle
Morag Smith's poems erupt with enthusiasm and indignation and pain. Above all they express an unsentimental love of life and especially of Cornwall, tuning in again and again to a profound ancient music. Sometimes it's as if one of the Beats had landed at Falmouth, but there's also a more subtle vein of free verse that another poet from the Isle of Lewis, Iain Crichton Smith, would have recognised. In her shorter lyrics, Smith has an instinctive sense of just how much she should say. There's no superficial polish here, but a rough-cut and often moving sincerity. The poems glitter like Cornish granite. - John Greening
Morag Smith wrote as she lived her life with a warrior heart. Her passion and enthusiasm for all things poetry is so deeply missed by all of us at Falmouth Poetry Group who were also privileged to call her friend. - Rosie Hadden
Morag Smith can never be contained - warrior, revolutionary, nomad, climate activist - a restless, hugely empathetic poet releasing a stream / of dark words / into the light - Katrina Naomi>br>
ABOUT Morag Smith:
Morag Smith was born in Cornwall on the 24th March 1969. She grew up in Essex and on the Isle of Lewis. She had six children and nine grandchildren. She lived for a number of years as a New Age Traveller with her then young family. She returned to Cornwall and graduated from the University of Falmouth in 2019 with a First Class Degree in Creative Writing. She was a member of the Falmouth Poetry Group, and engaged widely with the poetry community in Cornwall. Morag was also an artist, a Zen Buddhist, and an activist, working notably with Clean Ocean Trust. She died on the 26th July, 2023, having received a terminal cancer diagnosis in March of that year.
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