Michael Longley

Michael George Longley (27 July 1939 – 22 January 2025) was a Northern Irish poet. In his later years Longley observed: "It's a mystery where poems come from. If I knew where poems came from I would go there ... When I write a poem I am moving into unknown territory and hoping to be surprised by some kind of redemptive eloquence to cast light into dark corners". Following his death, the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, called Longley "a peerless poet".

Life and career The elder of twin boys, Michael Longley was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to parents Richard and Connie (née Longworth) from London; he had an elder sister, Wendy. Longley was educated at RBAI and subsequently read Classics at Trinity College Dublin, where he edited Icarus. He was the Ireland Professor of Poetry 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. After teaching for several years in Dublin, London and Belfast, he was a director of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland 1970 to 1991. He was part of the Belfast Group of poets that included Seamus Heaney with whom he became close friends, Derek Mahon and Paul Muldoon.

His wife, Edna, is a critic on modern Irish and British poetry. They had three children, Rebecca, Daniel and Sarah. An atheist, Longley described himself as a "sentimental" disbeliever.

In 1994, Longley wrote his most famous poem, "Ceasefire". Composed in hope of a ceasefire between the IRA and loyalist forces, it was released only one day before one came about. The poem adapts a famous scene from the Iliad, where King Priam begs for the body of his son back from the warrior Achilles.

In October 2002, Longley opposed a decision by Queen's University Belfast to end the teaching of Classics and urged the university's senate to take action. Citing Northern Ireland's recent troubled past, he asked: "Who can bring peace to people who are not civilised?"

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. Longley 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.

Longley died of complications from hip surgery on 22 January 2025, at the age of 85.

List of works

Poetry: Main Collections 1969: No Continuing City, London: Macmillan: New York: Dufour Editions 1973: An Exploded View, London: Victor Gollancz 1976: Man Lying on a Wall, London: Victor Gollancz; New York: Transatlantic Arts (1977) 1979: The Echo Gate, London: Secker & Warburg; New York: Random House 1991: Gorse Fires, London: Secker & Warburg; Winston-Salem, USA: Wake Forest University Press 1995: The Ghost Orchid, London: Jonathan Cape; Winston-Salem, USA: Wake Forest University Press (1996) 2000: The Weather in Japan, London: Jonathan Cape; Winston-Salem, USA: Wake Forest University Press 2004: Snow Water, London: Jonathan Cape; Winston-Salem, USA: Wake Forest University Press 2011: A Hundred Doors, London: Jonathan Cape; Winston-Salem, USA: Wake Forest University Press 2014: The Stairwell, London: Jonathan Cape; Winston-Salem, USA: Wake Forest University Press 2017: Angel Hill, London: Jonathan Cape; Winston-Salem, USA: Wake Forest University Press 2020: The Candlelight Master, London: Jonathan Cape; Winston-Salem, USA: Wake Forest University Press 2022: The Slain Birds, London: Jonathan Cape; Winston-Salem, USA: Wake Forest University Press

Poetry: Selected Editions 1981: Selected Poems 1963–1980, Winston-Salem, USA: Wake Forest University Press 1985: Poems 1963–1983, Edinburgh: Salamander Press; Dublin: Gallery Press; Winston-Salem, USA: Wake Forest University Press (1987) 1998: Selected Poems, London: Jonathan Cape; Winston-Salem, USA: Wake Forest University Press (1999) 2006: Collected Poems, London: Jonathan Cape; Winston-Salem, USA: Wake Forest University Press (2007) 2024: Ash Keys: New Selected Poems, London: Jonathan Cape; Winston-Salem, USA: Wake Forest University Press

Limited Editions and Booklets (poetry and prose) 1965: Ten Poems, Belfast: Festival Publications 1968: Secret Marriages, Manchester: Phoenix Press 1972: Lares, Woodford Green, London: Poet & Printer 1975: Fishing in the Sky: Love Poems, London: Poet & Printer 1981: Patchwork, Dublin: The Gallery Press 1993: Baucis and Philemon: After Ovid, London: Poet & Printer 1994: Birds and Flowers: Poems, Edinburgh: Morning Star 1994: Tuppeny Stung: Autobiographical Chapters, Belfast: Lagan Press 1997: Ship of the Wind, Dublin: Poetry Ireland 1998: Broken Dishes, Newry, Northern Ireland: Abbey Press 1999: Out of the Cold, Newry, Northern Ireland: Abbey Press 2003: Cenotaph of Snow: Sixty Poems About War, London: Enitharmon Press 2005: The Rope-Makers, London: Enitharmon Press 2008: A Jovial Hullabaloo, London: Enitharmon Press 2015: One Wide Expanse, Dublin: University College Dublin Press 2015: Sea Asters, Rochdale, UK: Andrew J Moorhouse, Fine Press Poetry 2016: The Dipper's Range, Rochdale, UK: Andrew J Moorhouse, Fine Press Poetry 2016: Twelve Poems, Thame, Oxford: Clutag Press 2017: Songs for Dead Children: Poetry in Violent Times, London: Faber and Faber 2017: Sidelines: Selected Prose, London: Enitharmon Press 2019: Ghetto, Rochdale, UK: Andrew J Moorhouse, Fine Press Poetry 2020: Homer's Octopus, Rochdale, UK: Andrew J Moorhouse, Fine Press Poetry 2022: Metamorphoses, Rochdale, UK: Andrew J Moorhouse, Fine Press Poetry 2022: Canticle, Rochdale, UK: Andrew J Moorhouse, Fine Press Poetry 2024: Birds & Flowers, Rochdale, UK: Andrew J Moorhouse, Fine Press Poetry

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

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. It also brought him the inaugural Yakamochi Medal in 2018. He received honorary doctorates from Queen's (1995) and Trinity (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.

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

His 2014 collection, The Stairwell, won the 2015 International Griffin Poetry Prize. In 2015, he received the Ulster Tatler 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."

In 2015 Longley was elected a Freeman of the City of Belfast. In 2018, he was made an honorary fellow of Trinity. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts.

In autumn 2021, the School of English at Queen's University opened the Longley Room to honour the poet and his wife. The university also established the Michael Longley scholarship fund, offering two scholarships each year to poetry students of particular merit.