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 book is a revised and reprocessed version of his fourth collection, originally published by Poetry Salzburg in 2009 as No Time for Roses.'...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 in Envoi 144 '...the tone is quiet...no clatter of experimentation but...slow accumulation of detail, comfortable and readily accessible syntax and familiar everyday language...' - D.A. Prince on Here and Now (2015) in London Grip on-line '... 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 on No Time for Roses (2009) in Poetry Salzburg Review The first three parts of Heat of the Moment explore various kinds of illusion in our formative experience and in our emotional, artistic and spiritual lives. The final part celebrates the power of love and mature perspectives over negative influences such as the loss of circumstances, people and objects we are attached to.
