Most Read... Rebecca WattsThe Cult of the Noble Amateur
(PN Review 239)
John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Tim Parksin conversation with Natalia Ginzburg
(PN Review 49)
Next Issue James K. Baxter, Uncollected Poems Rod Mengham, Last Exit for the Revolution Stav Poleg, The Citadel of the Mind Jena Schmitt, Resting Places: The Writing-Life F Friederike Mayrocker Wayne Hill, Poems
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
PN Review 275
PN Review Substack

This interview is taken from PN Review 140, Volume 27 Number 6, July - August 2001.

in conversation with James Michie Hamish Ironside

Since his poems first appeared in Penguin New Writing in 1950, James Michie has published much less of his own poetry than of his translations. Indeed the acclaim for his translations (from writers such as Catullus, Horace, Martial, La Fontaine and Euripides) may to some degree account for his own poems not being so well known; one can think of other similarly fine translators whose original poems seem much under-rated, perhaps due to the urge to pigeon-hole writers.

My own discovery of Michie's poetry came a few years ago. Knowing his name through having enjoyed some of his translations, I picked up his
Collected Poems at a second-hand bookshop. I was surprised to find myself enjoying his original poems even more than his Catullus; indeed, the book has probably given me more pleasure than all but two or three other volumes of poetry in my life. His poems are as stylistically simple as those of Betjeman or Larkin, and no less skilfully composed. A particularly delightful part of the book is the section of 'Epigrams and Oddities', collecting such things as a fine Burns parody, a double dactyl, and 'Under a Hot Lapis Lazuli Sky', in which Michie manages to include 59 anagrams of the word 'hospital'. Contrary to expectations, this poem becomes more pleasing rather than palling with each successive reading.

After some months fruitlessly trying to track down Michie, I eventually discovered, quite by chance, that he is alive and well and ...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image