Mike Lee began writing poems and stories as a child. Overcoming dyslexia he qualified as a teacher and then became a lecturer when he penned EL articles and several text-books. In 1985 he successfully completed a Sociolinguistic-research doctorate. Now retired, rather than creating academic texts he has time to be creative once again.
Themes are as diverse as wartime childhood toys, travels in Africa, a midnight fox, Hockney’s art and the Christmas turkey (they ‘cradle the consecrated carcass,/steam-screaming, from sacristy/to linen, carving altar.’) He speaks in the voices of nomad tribespeople, a blind beggar; takes us travelling through time and space in his memories; asks us to ponder on this puzzling business of being human. I discover echoes of GM Hopkins, Saxon kennings.
This is a poet with a lifetime of experience, both ordinary and extraordinary, to sift and digest and re-present in a welter of word-rhythms. I look forward to the next volume of his musings.
Jo Waterworth
ISBN 978-909404-09-0 £5 28 pages
