James William Morrison was born in his grandfather's house in John Knox Street, Glasgow, Scotland in 1947. In the mid 1960s he was an instructor of the Ren Bu Kan contact Karate club. Later with William Coyle, James established the Hamilton Hill Aikido Dojo in Glasgow, for many years the heart of Aikido activity in Scotland. Jim Morrison became a Buddhist at the age of fourteen and a Zen Buddhist at the age of seventeen.
He has earned part of his income from poems, playwriting, painting and acting. Jim Morrison worked for several years as a veterinary medical photographer for Glasgow University Veterinary Medical Hospital & School. In the mid-60's he opened Scotland's first Hippie Arts & Crafts shop, Happy Daze in Maryhill, Glasgow. He attended Strathclyde University, gaining a BA degree in Arts & Social Sciences. He was a board director of the Scottish Society of Playwrights, for whom he produced play-readings; and a founding member of The Glasgow Film & Video Workshop, now Glasgow Media Access Centre and a founding director of Pan African Arts Scotland. As Artistic Director of The Immediate Theatre Company, he produced and directed plays and play-workshops.
James Morrison was involved in saving the Dowanhill Church in Hyndland, Glasgow for conversion into Cottiers Theatre. He was coordinator of the Immediate Theatre Company's Communications & Contemporary Arts Centre Project, Charing Cross, Glasgow, where he produced seven television programmes, broadcast on Clyde CableVision. He was editor of the literary magazine Ma Boheme, a newsmagazine Horse Feathers, comic False Nose, and the visual and performance arts publications Immediate Magazine and Immediate News.
James Morrison is Chairman of Scots Rights , a civil & human rights organisation.
His translation of The Lysistrata of Aristophanes has been published by Immediate Arts. James Morrison's poems and short stories have been published in various magazines and anthologies, and broadcast on radio and television. His collection of poems Scottish Zen Samurai has just been published by Immediate Arts.
James Morrison is author of The Snark Was A Boojum: Structuralism and Semiology Applied to Stream of Consciousness Writing, published by Immediate Arts.
IMMEDIATE ARTS, Flat 1/2, 33 Kirkland Street, Glasgow G20 6SY
