Looking for Leeway. K. Michel as Alice in Wonderland

From the very beginning Michel’s poetry met with considerable appreciation, from readers and from critics. Prize juries also show appreciation for his work. Critics value him for the wittiness of his observations, his ability to put the everyday in a new perspective, his eye for the mysterious, his hidden melancholy, his lucidity. The critic Rob Schouten talked of a ‘pleasant and intriguing kind of poetic freedom’ and Mustafa Stitou of ‘light-footed bewilderment’.