Michael Longley

Michael Longley, CBE (born 27 July 1939) is a poet from Belfast in Northern Ireland.

Michael Longley

CBE
Michael Longley reading his poetry at the Corrymeela Peace Center in Ballycastle, Northern Ireland, July 2012
Born (1939-07-27) 27 July 1939
Belfast
EducationRoyal Belfast Academical Institution
Alma materTrinity College, Dublin
GenrePoetry
Notable awardsWhitbread Poetry Prize
T. S. Eliot Prize
Hawthornden Prize
SpouseEdna Longley

Life and career

He was born in Belfast to English parents, Longley was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, and subsequently read Classics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus.

He was the Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2007 to 2010, this being a cross-border academic post set up in 1998, previously held by John Montague, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Paul Durcan. He was succeeded in 2010 by Harry Clifton.[1]

North American editions of Longley's work are published by Wake Forest University Press.

His wife Edna Longley is a critic on modern Irish and British poetry.[2] They have three children. Their daughter is artist Sarah Longley.

An atheist, he describes himself as a "sentimental" disbeliever.[3]

On 14 January 2014, Longley participated in the BBC Radio 3 series The Essay – Letters to a Young Poet. Taking Rainer Maria Rilke's classic text Letters to a Young Poet as inspiration, leading poets wrote a letter to a protege.[4] Michael Longley has provided readings of his poetry for the Irish Poetry Reading Archive

Awards and honours

Gorse Fires (1991) won the Whitbread Poetry Prize. The Weather in Japan (2000) won the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Hawthornden Prize.[5]

He holds honorary doctorates from Queen's University Belfast (1995) and Trinity College, Dublin (1999) and was the 2001 recipient of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Longley was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours.[6]

He won a 2011 London Awards for Art and Performance. His collection A Hundred Doors won the Poetry Now Award in September 2012.[7]

His 2014 collection The Stairwell won the 2015 International Griffin Poetry Prize.

In 2015, he received the Ulster Tattler Lifetime Achievement Award.

He was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize in 2017. The Chair of the judges, Don Paterson, said: "For decades now his effortlessly lyric and fluent poetry has been wholly suffused with the qualities of humanity, humility and compassion, never shying away from the moral complexity that comes from seeing both sides of an argument."

List of works
Michael Longley reading his poetry at the Corrymeela Peace Center in Ballycastle, Northern Ireland, July 2012
  • Ten Poems (1965)
  • Secret Marriages: Nine Short Poems (1968)
  • No Continuing City (1969)
  • Lares (1972)
  • An Exploded View (1973)
  • Fishing in the Sky: Love Poems (1975)
  • Man Lying on a Wall (1976)
  • The Echo Gate (1979)
  • Patchwork (1981)
  • Selected Poems 1963–1983 (1985)
  • Selected Poems 1963–1980 (1981)
  • Gorse Fires (1991)
  • Baucis and Philemon: After Ovid (1993)
  • Birds and Flowers: Poems (1994)
  • Tuppeny Stung: Autobiographical Chapters (1994)
  • The Ghost Orchid (1995)
  • Ship of the Wind (1997)
  • Broken Dishes (1998)
  • Selected Poems (1998)
  • The Weather in Japan (2000)
  • Snow Water (2004)
  • Collected Poems (2006)
  • "A Jovial Hullabaloo" (2008)
  • A Hundred Doors (2011)
  • The Stairwell (2014)
  • "Sea Asters" (2015) published by Andrew J Moorhouse – Fine Press poetry
  • "The Dipper's Range" (2016) published by Andrew J Moorhouse – Fine Press poetry
  • Twelve Poems (Clutag Press, 2016)
  • "Angel Hill" (2017) - Cape poetry
  • "Sidelines" (2017) http://enitharmon.co.uk/product/sidelines-selected-prose/
  • "Ghetto" (2019) published by Andrew J Moorhouse – Fine Press poetry http://www.finepresspoetry.com/ghetto---michael-longley.html

See also
  • List of Northern Irish writers

References
  1. BBC article. 7 September 2007. Longley new professor of poetry.
  2. Wake Forest University Press Archived 10 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  3. Michael Longley's reverence for the living and the dead is as evident as ever
  4. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03pdg5b/The_Essay_Letters_to_a_Young_Poet_Michael_Longley/
  5. "Michael Longley". Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. 16 January 2018. Retrieved 16 January 2018.CS1 maint: others (link)
  6. "No. 59446". The London Gazette (Supplement). 12 June 2010. p. 7.
  7. "Michael Longley wins €5,000 poetry prize", The Irish Times, 8 September 2012.

Further reading
  • Allen, Michael, ed. Options: The Poetry of Michael Longley, Éire-Ireland 10.4 (1975): pp. 129–35.
  • Allen Randolph, Jody. "Michael Longley, February 2010". Close to the Next Moment: Interviews from a Changing Ireland. Manchester: Carcanet, 2010.
  • Allen Randolph, Jody and Douglas Archibald, eds. Special Issue on Michael Longley. Colby Quarterly 39.3 (September 2003).
  • Brearton, Fran. Reading Michael Longley. Bloodaxe, 2006.
  • Clyde, Tom, ed. Special Issue on Michael Longley. Honest Ulsterman 110 (Summer 2001).
  • Peacock, Alan J. and Kathleen Devine, eds. The Poetry of Michael Longley: Ulster Editions and Monographs 10. Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, England: Colin Smythe, 2000.
  • Robertson, Robin, ed. Love Poet, Carpenter: Michael Longley at Seventy. London: Enitharmon Press, 2009.
  • Russell, Richard Rankin. Poetry and Peace: Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, and Northern Ireland. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010.
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