J.O. Morgan lives on a small farm in the Scottish Borders. His first book, Natural Mechanical (CB Editions, 2009), won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward First Collection Prize; its sequel, Long Cuts (CB Editions, 2011), was shortlisted for a Scottish Book Award.
His third book, At Maldon (CB Editions, 2013), takes its bearings from the Old English poem ‘The Battle of Maldon’. It re-imagines the short-lived battle that took place on the Essex coast in 991AD, when a ragtag army of Anglo-Saxons was mustered to defend their land from Viking raiders.
In 2015, Morgan published In Casting Off (HappenStance Press), a poem-novella that tells a love story that is set within a remote fishing community. Interference Pattern, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, appeared from Cape Poetry in 2016, and Assurances in 2018.