TAKING COVER merges poems from the author’s first prize-winning 33 page pamphlet, Learning Not to Touch (1997), with revised and new poems on perennial themes such as formative childhood experiences, how we relate to others and the world about us, spirituality beyond religion, and bereavement. Notable titles are  Shelled on Haying Island, Moving On, Redemption, In the Limelight, Navigating Past, Miracles, Wild and On the Flanks of the Chase.

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 in Oxford, and worked as a secondary school teacher in Rutland for many years.  In 1998, Michael Tolkien was a New Voice in the East Midlands Arts reading tour, and in 1999 his second pamphlet of new poems, Reaching for a Stranger, was published by Shoestring Press. In 2000, Redbeck Press published Michael’s first full-length collection, Outstripping Gravity, followed in   2003, by a second, Exposures. This received positive reviews in various literary journals, including Acumen and Envoi:

“….though the words may be everyday, 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)

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