Tony Connor's poetry is an intense and detailed contemplation of the affections and difficulties of ordinary life. It is not a simple, domestic poetry but an exploration of the troubled role of the poet in the common experience, a poetry which attempts to reconcile the poet's voice with the voice of the common man. That he achieves this reconciliation so compellingly is due not only to his honest and unsentimental eye and his unswerving respect for his subject but also to his considerable technical skill, which allows him to give his modern themes added force by containing them within subtle, and often classical, poetic forms.

John Anthony Augustus Connor was born in Manchester, Lancashire. He was brought up entirely by his mother, Dorothy Mable Richardson Connor, who earned her living by taking in lodgers. His father, John Connor, who came to the house initially as a lodger, disappeared...