Morrissey’s poems build to their conclusions, which then open to larger associations. The talent demonstrated is like that of Yeats; Morrissey’s lines of stainless steel gleam with a dangerous, piercing beauty.
—George Elliott Clarke, Books in Canada

Morrissey’s inward-looking voice is immediately engaging and intensely personal. Mapping the Soul is a significant volume by a major Canadian poet. It is also a book that any reader of contemporary poetry will find rewarding and satisfying. 
—Ian Colford, The Dalhousie Review

I would like to say of Stephen Morrissey’s poetry that it strikes me very much as the real thing.
—Louis Dudek, Introduction to The Trees of Unknowing

This volume includes work from fifty years of Stephen Morrissey’s published poetry. Stephen Morrissey was born in Montreal, the city where he still lives. He was educated at McGill University and taught for many years at Champlain Regional College. Morrissey won the Peterson Poetry Award while at McGill. In the mid-1970s Morrissey was a member of the Véhicule Poets, a group of poets who organized readings at Véhicule Art Gallery and helped bring a rebirth of innovative poetry to Montreal.  He has published nine books of poetry, several chapbooks, and two volumes on poetry and poetics. In 1997 the Government of Québec named an island in northern Québec after a phrase from one of his poems, “La Vingt-Septième Lettre”. The Stephen Morrissey Fonds, 1963 - 2014, are housed at Rare Books and Special Collections of the McLennan Library of McGill University. Morrissey’s themes, as he writes in the preface, are “the transience of life, family, grief at losing close family members, and romantic love”; he is a poet of passion and insight into the human condition.