Michael Curtis grew up in Liverpool, attended Oxford and Sheffield universities, worked in library and cultural services, and now lives in Kent. He is widely published in magazines and anthologies and has given readings and workshops in England, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Belgium, France, Finland, Germany, Latvia, and the UN Buffer Zone, Cyprus.
 
He was Writer in Residence for the Arts Council, England Great Expectations conference, the Metropole Arts Centre, Folkestone, the Maison de Poesie, Nord/Pas de Calais in France, and the Writers and Translators House, Ventspils, Latvia. He participated in poetry pRO and poetry tREnD and his work has been studied and translated at the Universities of Liege, Bucharest and the Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich and broadcast in England, France, Ireland, Romania and Latvia.
 
He has managed poetry events and international writing exchanges and tours, such as Words Unbound, and co-edited anthologies for adults and children. He has also assisted in translation from French, Finnish and Latvian.
 
His eleventh poetry collection, Horizon, set on the Isle of Man, was launched at the first Manx Litfest in 2012 and his latest collection, The Fire in Me Now, was published by Cultured Llama in 2014. A pamphlet sequence, Lullaby Days, Indigo Dreams, and a Latvian/English selection, Divi Apvāršni (Two Horizons), Daugava, Riga, are due in 2015.
 
Work in progress includes Family Likeness, Suspending Disbelief, Baltics, Aquamarine, Lines in the Air, also The Great Weighing Bed and Gems (with Lyn White) and a series of poems for children, The Haphazard Lizard and Other Affected Animals.
 

…the poetry moves through imagery of war and grief to the beautifully developed third and fourth sections of the book … Here Curtis immerses the reader in the ‘ripeness’ of desire, the arrival of love and the ruse of safety in a world where ‘pandemonium’ may be just round the corner

 

Liz Bahs, The Frogmore Papers

 
 

tackling the themes of life, love and death … he finds new things to say in bold poems that confront and present challenging ideas. There is a deceptive simplicity that hides in the clear and precise images … He is a poet who has taken change and modern life … in ways that capture the idea of “quiet desperation” and makes it real and understandable.

 

Jim Bennett, The Poetry Kit

 
 

I love the tone of elegiac acceptance and admire the work very much. The title poem [In Serotonin Days] is quite stunning, remarkable by any standards.

 

Bernard O’Donoghue

 
 

Someone engaged with something real rather than just concerned to set up clever comments.

 

Jim Burns

 
 

An impressive collection of poems, skillfully and unobtrusively well-crafted. His rhythms are subtle and flexible. He’s not afraid of the big subjects either. The possibility, the fact, of death and hope transcend ordinary life.

 

Joanna Boulter (Other Poetry)

 
 

Rich with images of travel and people and the universal concerns that bond us all together as human beings. Subtlety, a keen eye and unobtrusive reflection illuminate and offer us a panoramic picture of people, time and landscape caught in the grip of existence.

 

Maggie Harris (Connections)

 
 

Beguiling, relaxed and assured, Michael Curtis is confident enough not to over-egg the pudding in terms of imagery or to become bogged down in ‘devices’ and the result is a set of poems exploring geographical, emotional and cultural journeys in a variety of voices – including his own. We encounter a series of condensed observations and fictions, with a wide emotional repertoire and a sense that this collection has been honed with an admirable lack of sentiment and self-indulgence.

 

Catherine Smith (The Frogmore Papers)

 
 

Publications:
 
Making Tracks [Platform Poets, 1984]
The Shape of Happiness [Aegis Press, 1994]
In Deepest England [Redbeck Press, 1997]
Serotonin Days [Redbeck Press, 2001]
Red Meat Dreams [Redbeck Press, 2003]
Presences with Barabara & Russi Dordi [Picture-Poems, 2005]
Long Haul [Redbeck Press, 2005]
Taking Shape – Selected Poems 1984-2005, [La Maison de la Poesie, Nord/Pas de Calais, 2006]
Weeks [Urban Fox Press, 2007]
In the Affirmative [Redbeck Press, 2008]
Walking Water [Editions de Vanneaux, Picardy, 2009]
Poems by Post with Philip & Sue Bennetta, [Community of Poets and Artists Press, 2011]
Horizon [Lily Publications, Isle of Man, 2012]
The Fire in Me Now [Cultured Llama, 2014]
 
The Scarpfoot Zone: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry from Kent,
   Editor with John Rice and David Shields [Aegis Press, 1996]
 
For children:
 
The Black Hound [The Manx Experience, 2006]
Melnais suns (The Black Hound and Poems) [ Daugava, Riga, 2010]
From Cover to Cover and Kent Life young people’s poetry anthologies,
   Editor with Maggie Waite [Kent County Council, 1996/1997].