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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.
‘He has an adroit eye and ear for descriptions of place. The collection’s title poem illustrates his range when he recalls a visit to Castle Howard…Much for me to ponder, enjoy and remember’ (Martin Bax: Ambit 199).
‘…His best poems…do something both original and informed by the tradition he loves: they are visually and aurally satisfying…there are unmissable poems in each of his collections…But for the moment, here is 'No Time for Roses’, a book that uniquely celebrates absences, a book for which good reads - hundreds of them - should make time’ (Helena Nelson: Poetry Salzburg Review. 17, Spring 2010).
His ‘Leaning Not to Touch’ was runner-up in Redbeck’s 1996 collection competition. In 1998 he was a New Voice in the East Midlands Arts reading tour. ‘Reaching for a Stranger’ was published by Shoestring Press in 1999. In 2000 Redbeck published his first full collection, ‘Outstripping Gravity’, following by ‘Exposures’ (2003) and ‘Taking Cover’ (2005). In 2000 Poetry Salzburg published ‘No Time for Roses’.
‘Refuge’ (2012) suggests there are many kinds of search for sanctuary. In Part 1 characters or objects reveal this in their unique identity. Part 2 (‘Cloister and Promenade’) is more comic, even satirical about how dubious kinds of stability or identity are achieved. Part 3 looks at specific refuges. Part 4 explores attempts to find security by identifying with surroundings and those who are close to us.
