Edwin George Morgan was born 27 April 1920 in Glasgow's West End. Edwin was a Scottish poet and translator who was associated with the Scottish Renaissance. He is widely recognised as one of the foremost Scottish poets of the 20th century. In 1999, Morgan was made the first Glasgow Poet Laureate. In 2004, he was named as the first Scottish national poet The Scots Makar. He went to Glasgow University to study English literature in 1937. While at University Morgan also studied French and Russian. The Second World War then interrupted his studies. From 1940 Morgan served in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Returning to Glasgow in 1946, he graduated with first class honours the following year. Morgan then joined the staff of the English Literature Department after turning down a scholarship to Oxford. He worked as a lecturer at Glasgow until his retirement as a professor in 1980. Morgan’s first book of poetry was published in 1952.

Edwin Morgan has always been interested in many different areas, some of which include languages, technology, art, and film, he began to travel widely in the 1950s. He translated poetry from the Russian, Hungarian, French, Italian, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and other languages. He wrote poems on film and theatre, Science Fiction poetry, Sonnets from Scotland, Glasgow Sonnets, Instamatic Poems, and Newspoems. He was announced Glasgow's first Poet Laureate in autumn 1999, and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2000. In June 2001 he received the prestigious Weidenfeld Prize for Translation. He died on 19 August 2010 at the age of 90 in his beloved home city of Glasgow.