Michael Longley
Michael Longley, CBE (born 27 July 1939) is a poet from Belfast in Northern Ireland.
Life and career
Born in Belfast, Longley was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, and subsequently read Classics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus.
He was Professor of Poetry for Ireland from 2007 to 2010, 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.
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]
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.
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.[5]
He won a 2011 London Awards for Art and Performance. His collection, A Hundred Doors, won the Poetry Now Award in September 2012.[6]
His 2014 collection The Stairwell won the 2015 International Griffin Poetry Prize.
in 2015, he received the Ulster Tattler Lifetime Achievement Award.
List of works
- 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)
- Poems 1963-1983 (1985)
- 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 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
See also
References
- ^ BBC article. 7 September 2007. Longley new professor of poetry.
- ^ Wake Forest University Press
- ^ Michael Longley's reverence for the living and the dead is as evident as ever
- ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03pdg5b/The_Essay_Letters_to_a_Young_Poet_Michael_Longley/
- ^ "No. 59446". The London Gazette (invalid
|supp=(help)). 12 June 2010. - ^ "Michael Longley wins €5,000 poetry prize", The Irish Times, 2012-09-08.
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: 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: Notre Dame UP, 2010.
External links
- Michael Longley at British Council: Literature contains a "Critical Perspective" section
- Video readings in the 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
- 1939 births
- Living people
- Alumni of Trinity College, Dublin
- Aosdána members
- Atheists from Northern Ireland
- Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize recipients
- Costa Book Award winners
- Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
- Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
- Irish poets
- People from Belfast
- Poets from Northern Ireland
- 20th-century Irish writers
- 20th-century Northern Irish poets
- 21st-century Irish writers
- 21st-century British poets