About

Never The Right Time

‘Be honest’, says Blake Morrison in the poem ‘Hug’, and expertly takes his own advice. His meditations on age, family and the planet’s peril look hard at conclusions while celebrating what remains. The result is exemplary: lucid but luminous. – Andrew Motion

After he celebrated the Suffolk landscape and seascape in his Shingle Street collaboration with the Hosepipe Band, Blake Morrison has now broadened his range to encompass themes of elation, regret, nostalgia, sensuality and domestic comedy. There’s a sense of passing time or ‘timefulness’ – of fading memories, missed chances and the coming of age. But his touch remains light throughout.

The second half of the evening will be devoted to poems from other poetry collections by Blake.

Blake Morrison was born in Yorkshire and was formerly the literary editor of the Observer and the Independent on Sunday. His publications include two bestselling memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? and Things My Mother Never Told Me; the poetry collections Dark Glasses, The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper and Shingle Street; and four novels, including The Last Weekend and The Executor. He has won various awards, including the Eric Gregory, E. M. Forster and J. R. Ackerley prizes. His latest memoir, Two Sisters, came out in 2023, as did the poetry pamphlet Skin & Blister. He was Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths from 2003 to 2023.