Michael Wyndham Thomas

“Since 2004, Dr. Michael Wyndham Thomas has helped develop and spearhead the workshops for the Key West Robert Frost Poetry Festival. His hands-on teaching skills make poetry exciting for even the novice; his depth of knowledge is truly impressive.

Because he has endeared himself to everyone associated with the festival—and to many others who live on this island at the southernmost point in the United States—Michael is fondly referred to as the Poet at Large in the Conch Republic Navy.

With heartfelt thanks from The Robert Frost Poetry Festival Committee, Key West, Florida.”

-Barbara Bowers, writer and journalist, member of the Festival Committee.

Michael Wyndham Thomas is an Irish-British writer and lived in Canada for a number of years. He now lives in Worcestershire. He is an internationally-known poet, fiction-writer, dramatist and musician. His poetry, prose and scripts have appeared in Critical Survey, English, The English Review, Fire, The Interpreter’s House, Iron, The London Magazine, Other Poetry, Pennine Platform, Stand, Staple and The Swansea Review (UK), as well as Poetry Salzburg Review and The National Gazette (Tirana), Crossroads (Poland), Alive!, The Antigonish Review, From the Horse’s Mouth, Grain and Reflections (Canada), Etchings (Australia), The Black Mountain Review and Irish University Review (Ireland) and The Antioch Review, Magazine Six, Modern Haiku, Muscadine Lines and The Secret of Salt (USA). He also reviews for such publications as The Times Literary Supplement, Crossroads (University of Bialystok, Poland), The London Magazine, Under the Radar and The Journal of American Haiku.

Since April, 2004, Michael has been poet-in-residence at the annual Robert Frost Poetry Festival, Key West, Florida. He is now Poet-at-Large in the Navy of the Conch Republic of Key West. Other events outside the UK include readings at Linnaeus University, Sweden, and at Tampere University, Finland. Within the UK, he has read at Poetry Library events (the South Bank, London) and has given such keynote addresses as the one for Poems Are Being Written, a conference on contemporary poetry at the University of Portsmouth. He has also given readings at the Warwick Words Festival, The Ledbury Poetry Festival and at the annual Ways With Words Festival at Dartington Hall, Devon.

Novels:

The Mercury Annual

Pilgrims at the White Horizon

(TQF / Theaker’s Paperback Library)

Poetry collections:

God’s Machynlleth and Other Poems (Flarestack)

Port Winston Mulberry (Littlejohn and Bray)

Batman’s Hill, South Staffs (Flipped Eye International)

The Girl from Midfoxfields (Black Pear Press)

Come To Pass (Oversteps Books)

Early and Late (Cairn Time Press)

The Stations of the Day (Black Pear Press)

Drama:

Assumption Eve

FAQ

When?

Novella:

Esp. Shortlisted for the UK Novella Award, 2015.

Essays and Reviews:

Critical Survey, Crossroads, English, The English Review, The Explicator, Irish Studies Review, The Irish University Review, The London Magazine, Other Poetry, The Times Literary Supplement, Under the Radar, The Journal of American Haiku.

www.michaelwthomas.co.uk

The Swan Village Reporter:

http://swansreport.blogspot.co.uk/

Latest news, 2021: My new poetry collection, Under Smoky Light, is published by Offa's Press, ISBN 978-1-9996943-4-0 https://offaspress.co.uk/ Here are the details, including comments from other writers:

‘Michael W. Thomas’s poems always spring surprises of description, of language and of story’ – David Hart, author of Setting the poem to words, The Crag Inspector and Running Out.

‘Michael W. Thomas’ poems are rich with the details of past and present lives. They explore the wildest possibilities of those lives with passion and humour’ – Alison Brackenbury.

‘Michael W. Thomas tears the traditions of metaphors and similes apart. One feels each word took him hours to select before he cemented it in place; he has complete control of his medium’ – Kirby Congdon, US poet, dramatist, editor and associate of the Beat Poets; author of Selected Poems and Prose Poems and New Mystic, Connecticut, Sixty-Five Years Ago.

In Under Smoky Light, Michael’s poems fully justify such appraisal. Grouped in four sections – ‘A tunnel for the gust of time’, ‘Under smoky light’, ‘Down the road I go’ and ‘All that waits’ – they offer the reader striking landscapes both real and imagined, explorations of lives both present and past and reflections on the future in all its enthralling possibilities. The collection, says Simon Fletcher of Offa’s Press, is ‘first rate.’

Michael W. Thomas, Under Smoky Light.

ISBN: 978-1-9996943-4-0