James Michie Biography

British poet and translator, born in Weybridge, Surrey, educated at Trinity College, Oxford. He began his successful career in publishing in 1951. He is well known for the elegant accomplishment and accuracy of his verse translations, which include The Odes of Horace (1964), The Poems of Catullus: A Bilingual Edition (1969), and The Epigrams of Martial (1973). Possible Laughter (1959) and New and Selected Poems (1983), his collections of original verse, display a singularity of tone integral to their relaxed formality of technique. His poetry, which invariably succeeds in combining entertainment and underlying seriousness, is often characterized by the complex inventiveness of its metaphors. The wit permeating much of his work can be disquietingly macabre. Collected Poems appeared in 1994. He has also edited numerous works, which include The Bodley Head Book of Longer Short Stories (1975) and, with P. J. Kavanagh, The Oxford Book of Short Poems (1985).