Over 50 years, he has spent much time in Carrigskeewaun, County Mayo, which has inspired much of his poetry.[3]
His wife, Edna, is a critic on modern Irish and British poetry.[4] They have three children. Their daughter is the artist Sarah Longley. An atheist, Longley describes himself as a "sentimental" disbeliever.[5]
On 14 January 2014, he 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.[6] Longley has provided readings of his poetry for the Irish Poetry Reading Archive (UCD).
His twin brother, Peter, died in 2013/14. Longley dedicated the second half of The Stairwell (2014), his tenth collection, to him.[1]
His 2014 collection, The Stairwell, won the 2015 International Griffin Poetry Prize.[12] In 2015, he received the Ulster Tatler Lifetime Achievement Award.[13] 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."[14]
In 2015 Longley was elected a Freeman of the City of Belfast.[15] In 2018, he was made an honorary fellow of Trinity College Dublin.[16]
List of works
Longley reading his poetry at the Corrymeela Peace Center in Ballycastle, Northern Ireland, July 2012
Ten Poems (1965), Belfast: Festival Publications
Secret Marriages: Nine Short Poems (1968), Manchester: Phoenix Press
No Continuing City (1969), London: Macmillan: New York: Dufour Editions
^ a bKellaway, Kate (3 August 2014). "The Stairwell review – Michael Longley's shortcuts to the heart". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 March 2022.
^"Longley new professor of poetry". bbc.co.uk. 7 September 2007. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
^Viney, Michael (17 July 2009). "An imagination nourished by the landscape of the west". www.irishtimes.com. Retrieved 9 August 2020.
^Wake Forest University Press Archived 10 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine
^O'Brien, Sean (9 April 2011). "A Hundred Doors by Michael Longley – review | Michael Longley's reverence for the living and the dead is as evident as ever". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
^"The Essay – Letters to a Young Poet", bbc.co.uk, 2014. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
^"Michael Longley". Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. 16 January 2018. Retrieved 26 July 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
^"Ist Yakamochi Medal Award Decision". www.koshibun.jp. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
^Kennedy, Maev (24 April 2001). "Medal crowns Belfast poet's renaissance". www.theguardian.com. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
^Wallace, Arminta (8 September 2012). "Michael Longley wins €5,000 poetry prize". The Irish Times.
^Doyle, Martin (5 June 2015). "Michael Longley wins Griffin International Poetry Prize". www.irishtimes.com. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
^"Poet Michael Longley's lifetime achievement gong at Ulster Tatler awards". Belfast Telegraph. 18 September 2015. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
^Kean, Danuta (1 June 2017). "Michael Longley wins PEN Pinter Prize for unflinching unswerving poetry". The Guardian.
^Publisher's note Angel Hill.
^"TRINITY MONDAY 2018 - FELLOWS AND SCHOLARS". www.tcd.ie. Trinity College Dublin. 9 April 2018. Retrieved 27 January 2022.
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.
External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to Michael Longley.
Michael Longley at British Council: Literature (contains a "Critical Perspective" section)
Video readings in the Irish Poetry Reading Archive, UCD Digital Library, University College Dublin
Video recording of Michael Longley poetry reading at the University of Birmingham on YouTube
Wake Forest University Press North American publisher of Longley
Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery
Poetry archive profile and poems written and audio
Ulster Museum portrait
Audio interview by Krista Tippett
Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Michael Longley papers, 1960-2000