Born in Jamaica, MICHAEL COLLINS teaches English at Texas A&M. He published Understanding Etheridge Knight, his Columbia PhD thesis, with University of South Carolina Press. He has authored literary criticism, creative nonfiction, journalism and fiction in publications such as PMLA, Callalo, and Singapore’s The Strait Times.


“Michael Collins’s poetry rises out of the core of being and seeing—with a touch of Revelations—always searching for the ethereal alongside the earthy low, arriving at the stillpoint of Self. It takes the reader to places of witness where meaning matters; Collins’s language of muscular grace made of experience and deep dreaming crosses landscapes to help reimagine our worlds.”—Yusef Komunyakaa

“Mike Collins can and does praise and curse God simultaneously, which makes verbal and intellectual fire, a close relative of wisdom. Of course you hear, in a typical Congressional ‘debate,’ Christianity and racism, in various disguises. Collins’s poetry, even love poems, are informed by history. His is a major voice. Listen, and change for the better.”—Stanley Moss