[5] His 1996 libretto for The Fabulous Adventures of Alexander the Great by composer David Blake was translated into Greek.

[4]: 2 From 1980 to 1992, Birtwhistle was a Lecturer in English at the University of York, teaching mainly the seventeenth century and Romantic periods.

"[9] Dick Davis wrote that Birtwhistle’s poems “celebrate the vulnerable and immediate.”[10] Dennis O’Driscoll commented in Hibernia that "a sweeping imagination ranges over past and future, pastoral and urban themes" and John Heath-Stubbs described Birtwhistle as "an ambitious and original poet, not afraid to take chances", singling out a group of poems on Connemara as "altogether admirable for their exact and loving observation.

"[11] Peter Jay wrote that Birtwhistle "produces a dazzling array of poems on a range of historical, political and personal subjects.

"[12] Poet Carol Rumens wrote in The Guardian that "[Birtwhistle's] work is consistently both shaped and calm, and energised by the various tides it travels.