“a good sense of drama and a fine ear”
C K Williams (USA) Pulitzer Prize Poet
“marvellous, mysterious.”
U A Fanthorpe (UK) Oxford Professor of Poetry
Bloomvale Home 2016:
“I was surprised at how much I like these poems because I am a difficult reader of poetry. These got through to me because of how direct they are. They are also clear and sympathetic. I was pleased that they did not sink to sentimentality.”
Diana Athill (99 yrs), Alive Alive Oh
“These plain spoken and unflinchingly compassionate new poems by Joan Michelson show how life at the end of life goes on with all its usual flourish and surprise.”
Kate Bingham, Poet, Infragreen
“With their finely-calibrated tone of voice, Joan Michelson’s new poems vividly document the practicalities, mundane details and inevitable fate of those who live in Bloomvale Home. At the same time, she moves us powerfully with her portraits of the residents’ confusions, heroism and still-vigorous emotions. One of the residents bursts into song in a “language strange”; in a similar way, this highly original book makes for essential – if often uncomfortable – reading for us all.”
Martyn Crucifix, Poet, Daodejing, a Modern Translation
“These finely observed and compassionate poems give the reader a vivid sense of what might be in store for any of us.”
Carol Satyamurti, Poet, Mahabharata – a Modern Retelling
Toward the Heliopause 2011:
“In an unflinching retracing of emotions and events, travelling a journey of breathtaking range, Joan’s poems pursue the heart of loss and the tenacious loving needed to face unexpected bereavement and move on.”
Gillie Bolton, Medicine and the Arts, King College, London, UK
“This is a haunting, beautiful collection. Joan Michelson has registered the presence of absence. We feel Geoffrey Adkins in his own marvelously alert creations. Joan’s poems speak to his while possessing their own burnished solidity with a rueful, honest sense of being on one’s own.”
Baron Wormser, Poetry Professor, The Frost Center, NH, USA
“A delicate, elegiac collection”
Michelene Wandor, Poet and Playwright
“In here dwell the ghosts of history and personhood. Individual poems are close to memory, are built on its bones. We feel the flesh there.”
George Szirtes, T S Eliot Prize Poet
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