Steph Morris

As a translator from German, Steph Morris’s publications range from Ilse Aichinger’s poetry collection Squandered Advice and Brigitte Reimann’s journal It All Tastes of Farewell, to popular fiction by Martin Suter and nonfiction books on Joseph Beuys and Pina Bausch. In 2014 he was translator-in-residence at the Europäisches Übersetzer-Kollegium. He learned German (and Spanish) as an adult, and credits his success as a translator to lifelong participation in creative-writing feedback groups. He taught translation in Berlin where he lived for over a decade, and now runs a monthly open-access workshop for translators in London. In 2018 he was guest poetry editor for German translation magazine No Man’s Land.

As a poet, he has published the chapbook Please don’t trample us; we are trying to grow!, poems in many magazines and anthologies, and was longlisted for the 2021 National Poetry Competition. During the pandemic he gave several online readings and writing workshops, appearing at Poetry in Aldeburgh 2021.

With a lifelong interest in gardening, plants and the natural world, he writes poems which often feature the motifs of growth and nurture, or their lack, sometimes referring to childhood neglect and bullying. His poems were planted in gardens when he was selected three times for the Poetry School’s Mixed Borders residency scheme.

His first degree, and first love, was in visual art and he has begun exploring visual/concrete poetry, supported in 2021 by a Developing your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England and published in various online visual poetry journals.