SOURCE: "An Agnostic's Grace," in Charles Tomlinson: Man and Artist, edited by Kathleen O'Gorman, University of Missouri Press, 1988, pp. 153-81.

In the following essay, Kirkham explores the ways in which Tomlinson's more recent poetry modifies and extends the themes of his earlier poetry.

The evolution of Tomlinson's poerty has been gradual, organic, involving modifications and extensions but no disavowals of his past work. There have been changes over the years, but, as Tomlinson himself said to Michael Schmidt in 1977, "The underlying continuity remains the important thing."

In the late fifties, aspects of his work that caught the eye of contemporary readers were those contrasting most sharply on the one hand with the neo-romanticism of Dylan Thomas and on the other hand with the new "realism" of Philip Larkin (a marriage, rather, of "faithful and disappointing" realism with its complement, a disappointed romanticism). Tomlinson was evidently neither a romantic...