User:S.E. Morrissey
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Stephen Morrissey, poet and teacher, was born in Montreal, Canada. The Morrissey family emigrated to Canada from Tipperary, Ireland, in 1837. Stephen Morrissey is a fifth generation Montrealer.
Stephen Morrissey attended public schools in Montreal. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, Honours in English with Distinction, from Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in 1973. In 1976 he graduated with a Master of Arts degree in English from McGill University where he studied with the eminent poet Louis Dudek, author of twenty books of poetry and numerous books of essays and critical articles on literature. Morrissey won the Peterson Poetry Award while at McGill.
In the 1970s Morrissey was associated with the Vehicule Poets, a group of young poets (Ken Norris, Endre Farkas, Tom Konyves, Claudia Lapp, Artie Gold, John McAuley, and Stephen Morrissey) who published and organized poetry readings at Vehicule Art Gallery in Montreal. Morrissey's first book of poems, The Trees of Unknowing was published by Vehicule Press in 1978. Of this book, John Glassco wrote, "Glimpses of absolute reality recorded with insight, clarity, and quietness, always effective and always expressed with a faultless ear for words and rhythms."
Morrissey also published two literary magazines of poetry, "what is" (1973-1975) and "The Montreal Journal of Poetics" (1978-1985). Since 1976 Morrissey has taught English and Humanities at Champlain College, where he is still employed. In 1983 Coach House Press in Toronto published Morrissey's second book of poems, Divisions. The book was accepted for publication by bpNichol and edited by Frank Davey. Northrop Frye wrote, "Divisions...I found extremely powerful, at once visionary and movingly personal." Family Album (1989) was published by Caitlin Press in Vancouver.
Stephen Morrissey's poetry is visionary and grippingly confessional. He has been influenced by two great thinkers of the twentieth century: J. Krishnamurti, whose lectures he attended in Switzerland, California and New York City, and C.G. Jung, whose work influenced his Shadow Trilogy; The Compass (1993), The Yoni Rocks (1995), and The Mystic Beast (1997), all published by Empyreal Press in Montreal. Mapping the Soul: New and Selected Poems was published in 1998 by the Muses' Company in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Ralph Maud, Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia writes, "Morrissey tells us things we want to know about life, his life and ours. He does not get in the way of the reader thoroughly enjoying his poetry."
Morrissey has also published five chapbooks of his poems, Poems of a Period (Montreal, 1971), The Divining Rod (Edmonton, Greensleeve Editions, 1993), The Beauty of Love (The Poem Factory, Vancouver, 1993), The Carolyn Poems (The Poem Factory, Vancouver, 1994), and 1950 (The Poem Factory, Vancouver,1996).
Stephen Morrissey has received writer's grants from the Canada Council for the Arts. In 1997 the Government of Quebec named an island in northern Quebec after a phrase from one of his poems, "La Vingt-Septieme Lettre." His poetry has been translated into French by Pierre DesRuisseaux and Elizabeth Robert, and published in bilingual anthologies; Elizabeth Robert's translation of Morrissey's The Mystic Beast was publisahed in 2004 as La bete mystique (Montreal, Editions Triptyque). His poems have been published in anthologies and literary magazines. He has published many book reviews and articles on poetics in journals in Canada. He has given poetry readings across Canada, from Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He has also read his work in the United States.
The Stephen Morrissey Papers, 1963 - 2003 are housed at the Rare Books and Special Collections of the McLennan Library of McGill University. There have been two accruals and the archive includes literary papers, manuscripts, notebooks, posters, photographs of poets, tape recordings of poetry readings, Morrissey's extensive literary correspondence, and other papers.
Morrissey is currently working on a new collection of poems, Girouard Avenue, continuing on-going work on a family history, Patrick Morrissy and Mary Phelan: Their Descendants and Relatives in Canada, and the interpretation of The Aquarian Symbols. Stephen Morrissey is a member of The Writers' Union of Canada, The League of Canadian Poets, The Quebec Writers' Forum, PEN Canada, and The C.G. Jung Society of Montreal.
This biography is taken from www.stephenmorrissey.ca
