Michael W. Thomas shows thorough and deep insight to present both his short story and poetry. In his free verse poetry book of The Stations of the Day, published by Black Pear Press (2019), he takes the reader back to his childhood. He introduces us, as readers, to the British culture in the sixties: school, home, friends and family. The neighbourhood and the streets. The interactions and dreams. Memories and laughs. The live witty gestures when no sms (phone messaging) were introduced!
Six main sections takes us chronologically throughout his world starting from a single ‘rose,’ ‘When you were Young,’ ‘When Nothing’s asked or Thieved,’ ‘The World was a Squishy and Rubbery Thing,’ Endpapers and finally ‘Motley Futures’.
So imagine if a single rose aggravates such a wonderful memory along with the moon and singing together “free from mortal chat”:
“Only a rose
Only a moon
Doing what nobody sees”
In their dreams where the rose “dreams of rains delirium” and the moon of “bringing its own light,” Michael W. Thomas. takes us on his wonderful journey. His memories start with “When we were young” (P.76) to reflect on the tales in the sixties: Christmas and the church not forgetting the daily activities at primary school. He criticises the “brooches” of Miss Scott, the headmistress and mimics the “blister-lens glasses of Mrs Dale who “threatens to smack” (P.99) —gestures and words that make me, as a reader, back to school, mocking the teachers, and winking at my friends and fellow pupils.
The poems tells the reader beautiful stories full of metaphors with simple voice yet rich that reaches everyone.
And here we are when we reach the sixth part Motley Futures:
From look at the child until Come With Me where we witness the child in his pram, and, later crawling
Come with me and watch time’s clock
flip back to zero at fall of dusk
clearing the way for tomorrow
with fresh magic on the wind
the world at your door starting over.
* worldwide version of the ebook could be found on kindle Amazon.co.uk
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.
