Stephen Morse
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- For the designer, see Stephen Morse (designer).
Stephen Morse (born January 14, 1945, Oakland, California) is an American poet and publisher. He is sometimes referred to as the last living Oakland Side Beat poet, edited and published The White Elephant (5 editions 1970–1973), and Juice Magazine (7 editions 1974–1982). He was one of the original members of the Committee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers (COSMEP), the organization most closely associated with the rise of the small press movement in the U.S. in the latter part of the 20th century.
Morse was an activist publisher already when he joined COSMEP. Too old to be one of the hippy boomers. Too young to chum with Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Hirschman, Jack Kerouac, et al.. Morse, as was true of many COSMEP publishers, began to publish work that fit in to neither camp. Morse was already a poet of some local repute at that point, enabled by "the older San Francisco beats" to write any way he wanted, published in The Saturday Review, an Anthology of College Writers, a lot of small mags, A major influence and cosmic gossip, Bob Creeley, was an instructor at San Francisco State University in the 1970s, and met off campus with Morse and others to talk about poetry and writing poetry. Mostly Creeley gossiped with his buddies about the various foibles of the San Francisco poets. Many of Morse's early contacts came from this gathering. Experimentation was and is a hallmark of Morse's poetry and the poets he published.
Morse is currently an associate professor at Brown College in Mendota Heights, Minnesota, and co-edits Juice poetry magazine online with his wife, Minnesota poet Judy Brekke.
