Blake Morrison, "Never the Right Time"

 

Blake Morrison was born in Yorkshire and was formerly 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, EM Forster and JR Ackerley prizes. His latest memoir, Two Sisters, came out last year along with the poetry pamphlets Skin & Blister and Never the Right Time. He was Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths University from 2003-2023. 

About Never the Right Time
In earlier poetry collections, Blake Morrison has broached some difficult and occasionally violent subject matter: the serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, the Pendle witch trials, Cold War espionage, the loss of his younger sister. In this pamphlet the mood is gentler. There's a sense of passing time or 'timefulness' - of fading memories, missed chances and the coming of age (and beyond it the only end of age). But the tone isn't mournful - humour and irony are never far away.

Never the Right Time is published by New Walk Editions, which is co-edited by University of Leicester Associate Professor of American Literature and Creative Writing, Nick Everett. 

From Never the Right Time, by Blake Morrison

Never the Right Time

Remember the flat you sold

after the market crashed. 

Or the job you took, on a whim, 

giving up one you enjoyed. 

Or your "I love you,"

too slow a follow-up to theirs. 

Or the pregnancy

neither of you planned. 

Or the painting you liked,

red-stickered when you went back. 

Death will be the same, 

early, late, never the right time. 

Timeful

The waves bloom white against the rockface

or swamp the beach in bridal lace. 

It's the timelessness you come for,

afraid your own is running out. 

Timeful: there's a word you never hear.

It helps to be oblivious to oblivion

but you face it every night that you can't sleep.

Then it's dawn and the forgetting resumes.

Here you are, on the balcony,

the sea surrounding you,

the sun with its armful of light. 

  

Annual Creative Writing Lecture: Blake Morrison

You are cordially invited to this year's Annual Creative Writing Lecture, which will be given by Blake Morrison on Monday 18th March 2019 at 6.30pm, in Lecture Theatre 1, George Davies Centre, at the University of Leicester. The event is free and open to all - students, staff and public alike. Below is a description of the lecture.

About the Lecture: Life Writing and the Writing Life

Drawing on his experience in working in several different genres, Blake Morrison considers some of the ethical and formal challenges authors face in doing justice to the story they want to tell. The talk - aimed at creative writers, literature students and general readers - will include short extracts from poetry, fiction and memoir while addressing a number of key questions: What are the drawbacks of writing about family and ‘real’ people? How likeable does a narrator have to be? How strictly should a memoir writer adhere to the truth? Is remembering the same as inventing? When is ‘confessionalism’ acceptable rather than prurient and exploitative? What risks are there, and what advantages, in using regional dialect rather than standard English? 

About Blake Morrison
Blake Morrison was born in Skipton, Yorkshire, and has written fiction, poetry, journalism, literary criticism and libretti, as well as adapting plays for the stage. Among his best-known works are his two memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1993) and Things My Mother Never Told Me (2002). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a former Chair of the Poetry Book Society and Vice-Chair of PEN, and has been Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths University since 2003. His latest book is a novel with poems, The Executor (2018). http://www.blakemorrison.net/