Michael was born in 1963 and spent his childhood in Lancashire, England before moving south with his family to Newbury in Berkshire in the early ‘70’s. He went to comprehensive school in Newbury, then to Oxford University to read Philosophy & Theology.
After graduating, he trained as a newspaper journalist before joining the BBC in Cardiff as a radio producer in 1989. He moved with the BBC to London, then to Manchester, initially he worked in radio, then as a documentary filmmaker. His last job at the corporation was as Executive Producer and Head of Development for BBC Religion & Ethics, before he left the BBC to focus on writing.
Books in order of publication:
Soft Keys, (Secker and Warburg, 1993)
Raising Sparks, (Jonathan Cape, 1999)
Burning Babylon, (Jonathan Cape, 2001)
Lime kilns, (Redundant Press, 2002)
Her Maker’s Maker, (Phoenix Poetry Pamphlets, 2002)
Corpus, (Jonathan Cape, 2004) (winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award)
The Miracles of Jesus, (Lion Hudson, 2006)
Patrick’s Alphabet, (Jonathan Cape, 2006)
Breath, (Jonathan Cape, 2008)
The Half Healed, (Jonathan Cape, 2008)
Edgelands: Journeys into England’s True Wilderness (with Paul Farley), (Jonathan Cape, 2011)
Drysalter, (Jonathan Cape, 2013) (winner of the 2013 Costa Poetry Award)
Selected Poems, (Jonathan Cape, 2016)
Deaths of the Poets, (with Paul Farley), (Jonathan Cape, 2017)
Mancunia, (Jonathan Cape, 2017)
Takk, (Illustrations by Jake Attree. Published by Andrew J Moorhouse, Fine Press Poetry, 2020)
Ransom, (Jonathan Cape, 2021)
Quartet for the End of Time: On Music, Grief and Birdsong – 2025
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