User:Kegdoyle/sandbox

Mike (Charles) Doyle is poet, critic, biographer, and editor. Born in Birmingham, England in 1928, to Irish parents, Doyle was raised in London. From 1945 to 1954, he served in the British Royal Navy, after which he lived and wrote in Wellington, New Zealand, for many years. In 1969 Doyle moved with his family to Victoria,  British Columbia, Canada, where he founded the small but influential poetry journal Tuatara.

Doyle has published 16 volumes of poetry. His first poetry collection, A Splinter of Glass: Poems 1951–55, appeared in 1956. Later works include Stonedancer (1976) A Steady Hand (1982), Intimate Absences: Selected Poems (1993) and The Watchman’s Dance (2009).

Doyle’s poetry is characterized by the immediacy and precision of its imagery and the richness of its verbal play. According to New Zealand Books, Doyle is "alert to the pervasive mood and particular detail of the world around."

Doyle has also written studies of New Zealand poets R. A. K. Mason (1970) and James K. Baxter (1976), of William Carlos Williams (1982), and a biography of Richard Aldington (1989).