Brian Morse (1948-2007)

Brian Morse wrote stories and poems for children, although his first published works were ghost stories for adults. He was born in Birmingham in 1948 but grew up in Stroud, Gloucestershire. After reading English at Queens’, Cambridge he taught English in Treviso, near Venice, then trained as a teacher at Birmingham University. He was a primary school teacher for twelve years before leaving full time teaching to combine writing and supply work in the West Bromwich area.  He ran poetry workshops in hundreds of primary and middle schools in the Midlands and occasionally further afield (he actually enjoyed working in infant schools most: he was once a reception class teacher for a year). His passions included barges, dog walking and running poetry pamphleteering Dagger Press.

Brian Morse had many poems broadcast on BBC Schools Radio, for which he wrote several programmes including three programmes on Verse Universe introducing poems from his own collections. He was a Signal Poetry Award judge on four occasions, reviewed for the TES and wrote articles on poetry for children for various publications. Brian Morse received an Eric Gregory Award for a collection of poems by a writer under the age of thirty, was a prize winner at the Stroud Literary Festival and received a West Midlands Arts grant to write the teenage novel Breaking Glass.