PERHAPS only Edwin Morgan could manage to combine a book launch with a birthday party. Yet in April Scotland's poet laureate celebrated his 87th birthday at the same time as unveiling a new collection, Beyond the Sun - and the standing ovation he received, at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow, was a testament to his enduring popularity.

He was in a wheelchair, but in sparkling form. The public were welcome, as well as invited guests, and a crowd milled round to join in the singing of Happy Birthday (twice), enjoy readings - some by the poet himself - and munch a slice of cake. It really was a remarkable scene.

Now, Herald readers are being invited to choose poems by Morgan for a special volume of his work, 15,000 copies of which will be the "city-wide read", distributed free as part of Glasgow's Aye Write book festival. It's the first time a poet has been the focus of the festival, now in its third year; that the poet should be Morgan is unsurprising. Formerly Glasgow's first poet laureate, he is now Scotland's official national poet, or makar.

As readers of The Herald's daily poem know, Glaswegians are very well disposed to poetry generally, and also have a special regard and affection for Morgan.

Ten of the 50 poems in the new book will be chosen by Herald readers. Their choices - and their reasons for picking them - will be included with those of various well-known figures to make up the volume - which will be edited by Robyn Marsack, director of the Scottish Poetry Library, and Hamish Whyte, the poet and publisher. Culture and Sport Glasgow and the City's Library Service deserve to be complimented for initiating this project and publishing this work in association with the Scottish Poetry Library and Carcanet Press.

It's a most imaginative and enlightened idea, and a cultural coup for Glasgow. We've no doubt that Herald readers will respond enthusiastically to the chance to take part.

Our readers are not unused to being consulted on artistic matters. Two years ago, they reacted with impeccable taste to the paper's quest to find Scotland's most popular painting in a public collection. The shortlist of 10, it might be recalled, prompted a spectacular response from Morgan. He sent The Herald 10 freshly minted, insightful and witty poems, one for each of the featured paintings. They were printed in the paper and, this spring, published in book form as the aforementioned Beyond the Sun.

Morgan's hold on the public affection is strong. Many Herald readers will have attended his lectures on Paradise Lost and other English classics at the University of Glasgow. He was an inspirational lecturer, keeping potentially anarchic classes of several hundred undergraduates engrossed by his interpretative skills and enthusiasm. And, of course, his wide-ranging poetic output deals with many facets of Glaswegian life, past and present, without sentimentality. Grimness, humour and social comment are transmuted by a poet's vision into something far beyond mere sociological comment.

For example, the 10 Glasgow Sonnets from his 1973 collection, From Glasgow to Saturn, don't make for comfortable reading but say much about the post-industrial city of that time ("We have preferred silent slipways to the riveters' wit. And don't deny it - that's the ugly bit.") Poems such as King Billy and Glasgow Green explore aspects of Glasgow life that many would prefer to ignore. But it's a legitimate part of a major poet's role to confront prejudice.

Glasgow is also the setting for much of Morgan's personal poetry; the backdrop to his own personal odyssey. Even that most emotionally candid of late collections, Love and a Life, has its city references.

But, of course, Morgan is far more than a Glasgow poet. His scope could indeed be said to be universal. Think of that splendid poem of space travel, The First Men on Mercury, in which the somewhat patronising earthmen suffer a role reversal at the hands of the natives. Or consider that most impressive of sequences, Sonnets from Scotland (1984), which soars in a great imaginative journey with its space-voyager voyeurs ("We saw Lewis laid down laughed as Staffa cooled") through pre-history to some post-nuclear dispensation, taking in a dazzling mix of historical figures from Pontius Pilate to Burns and Matt McGinn en route. These sonnets become ever more impressive on re-reading, both as individual creations and for their cumulative effect.

Then there is Morgan the humourist. His Loch Ness Monster's Song is a favourite piece, as is The Piranhas, who turn unsuspecting passengers on the Glasgow subway into skeletons. There is Morgan the skilled translator of foreign masters such as Racine and Pushkin. There is Morgan the love poet of Strawberries and numerous other savourings of passion.

Another facet of Morgan emerged two years ago, when he responded to my request for a poem about William Wallace on the 700th anniversary of the Scottish patriot's execution. Almost by return of post he sent the deeply eloquent Lines for Wallace ("The power of Wallace cuts through art").

This poet for all seasons has been widely honoured in the course of his life. A Glasgow University graduate, he ended his distinguished teaching career at the university with a titular professorship of English (1975-80). Apart from his appointment as national poet of Scotland in 2004, he has received numerous honours, including D Litt degrees from Loughborough, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and was awarded the OBE in 1982. Further recognition came with the award of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2000. The only problem his poetry poses to Herald readers is one of over-abundant choice.