Living Jazz (Tenormen Press 1991) ISBN  0 9514903 0 3 

“Thank you for loving enough and living enough to write Living Jazz” [Maya Angelou] 

“Lykiard here renews that perennial love affair that poetry has with jazz… A joy to hold and read… After being slated by The Sun, Lykiard hardly needs my recommendation but I give it nonetheless. Wholeheartedly.” [Ifor Thomas, New Welsh Review] 

“Poetry of great poignancy, some of the best that this prolific and accessible writer has produced” [Derrick Woolf, Odyssey] 

“Surprisingly resonant… At conveying just how and why jazz is important in the spiritual and emotional life of an individual, Living Jazz is hard to beat” [Chris Parker, Jazz FM no 9]

“I like both jazz and poetry, but not together. But poems about jazz are a different matter. I enjoy those and Alexis Lykiard is one of the poets who excel in this field… So, get Living Jazz, read it carefully, and share Alexis Lykiard’s warm and loving tributes to jazz and its performers” [John Birks, The Kerouac Connection] 

“Throughout this book, Lykiard writes with vim and passion…lovers of jazz, or poetry, or life, or all of these, will appreciate his work” [Norman Jope, Memes] 

“Eloquent, powerful and immensely knowledgeable” [J.D. Marshall, Iota] 

 “There are great poems here… This book is in effect a jazz Testament; if ever a book of poetry begged to be the bible of a Jazz religion this is it; for it contains Genesis, Kings, Numbers, Revelations, and Passions. That the work runs from poetry to narrative and back to poetry again seems to support this theory” [Kevin Bailey, HQ] 

“ I think it’s important that there’s so much of it, rather than the odd toe-in-the-water shy fan-piece… I do admire its lack of diffidence… It may well turn out that publishers may find it too easy to blinker out what you’ve done. Most jazz people who aren’t uncomfortable with poetry would find thse interesting: they’re easy to make contact with” [Roy Fisher] 

“Endless enjoyment here, the title is certainly true to its  word… Congratulations on a coherent and valuable work, full of feeling and experience, not to mention facts” [Hugo Williams]