MICHAEL TOLKIEN was born in Birmingham in 1943, and brought up in rural South Oxfordshire and North Yorkshire. He studied Classics and English at St. Andrews and Oxford, and worked as a secondary school teacher in Rutland, and later in adult education in Leicester. Since 1997 he has published two booklets, eight full collections of verse, and three illustrated verse narrative fantasies. This first book of Collected Poems combines full collections published between 2000 and 2009, the second and third of which incorporated poems from booklets: Learning Not to Touch (Redbeck, 1998) and Reaching for a Stranger (Shoestring, 1999). CRITICS ON THE COLLECTIONS Learning Not to Touch (1998) ‘...there is a genuine sense of emotional urgency...coupled with solid structures, which makes for authentic poems...’ (S. Blyth: Prop) Outstripping Gravity (2000) Exposures (2003) ‘…increasing flintiness...suggests tight-lipped rage at how we let our illusory ‘real world’ worsen... A spiritual search is picking its way through not only the junk-thought and junk-objects we’re bombarded with, but also the authentic difficulties of finding meaning...’ (H. Lomas: Ambit 163) ‘…though the words may be every-day, even commonplace, this is dense, grown-up, meaty poetry that expects the reader to think as well as feel, to be prepared to read and re-read…it is very disciplined, spare writing. Imagery is exact. There’s not a word that hasn’t earned its keep… Memorable, assured, elegant, searching. Exposures is all this and more…’ (R.V. Bailey: Envoi, 138) Taking Cover (2005) ‘…his poetry is fluent, crafted, easy on the eye and mind…it has a wide range of subjects and is anchored in a believable reality presented in detail which is allowed to speak for itself…his stance avoids sentimentality with a detachment which is not indifference…’ (Eddie Wainwright: Envoi 144) No Time for Roses (2009) republished as Heat of the Moment (2024) ‘ His best poems do something both original and informed by the tradition he loves: they are visually and aurally satisfying...This is a collection that uniquely celebrates absences, a book for which good readers—hundreds of them—should make time...’ (Helena Nelson: Poetry Salzburg Review)
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