'A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders' - Seamus Heaney
Michael Longley has been called 'one of the finest lyric poets of our time'. In assembling the work of forty years, his Collected Poems displays a brilliantly sustained achievement whose depth, beauty and wit can now be fully appreciated. Longley's poetry combines intense concentration with remarkable variety. The formal and thematic range laid down in No Continuing City (1969) has undergone a series of rich metamorphoses up to Snow Water (2004), and the two poems included here as an epilogue.
Longley's genres span love poetry, war poetry, nature poetry, elegies, satires, verse epistles, poems that reflect on art and the art of poetry. He has extended the capacity of the lyric to absorb dark matter- the Great War, the Holocaust, the Northern Irish 'Troubles'. His poetic landscape intermingles Belfast (where he lives), western Ireland, Italy, Japan and Homeric Greece. Longley's superb translations from classical poets (such as 'Ceasefire', which greets the IRA ceasefire in terms of the Iliad) speak to contemporary issues while activating the deepest sources of European poetry.
'A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders' - Seamus Heaney
Michael Longley has been called 'one of the finest lyric poets of our time'. In assembling the work of forty years, his Collected Poems displays a brilliantly sustained achievement whose depth, beauty and wit can now be fully appreciated. Longley's poetry combines intense concentration with remarkable variety. The formal and thematic range laid down in No Continuing City (1969) has undergone a series of rich metamorphoses up to Snow Water (2004), and the two poems included here as an epilogue.
Longley's genres span love poetry, war poetry, nature poetry, elegies, satires, verse epistles, poems that reflect on art and the art of poetry. He has extended the capacity of the lyric to absorb dark matter- the Great War, the Holocaust, the Northern Irish 'Troubles'. His poetic landscape intermingles Belfast (where he lives), western Ireland, Italy, Japan and Homeric Greece. Longley's superb translations from classical poets (such as 'Ceasefire', which greets the IRA ceasefire in terms of the Iliad) speak to contemporary issues while activating the deepest sources of European poetry.
A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders.' Seamus Heaney
Michael Longley's thirteen collections have received many awards, among them the Whitbread Prize, the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Irish Times Poetry Prize and the Griffin International Prize. His Collected Poems was published in 2006, and Sidelines- Selected Prose in 2017. In 2001 he received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, and in 2003 the Wilfred Owen Award. He was appointed CBE in 2010, and from 2007 to 2010 was Ireland Professor of Poetry. In 2017 he received the PEN Pinter Prize, and in 2018 the inaugural Yakamochi Medal. In 2015 he was made a Freeman of the City of Belfast, where he and his wife the critic Edna Longley live and work. In 2022 he was awarded the prestigious Feltrinelli International Poetry Prize for a lifetime's achievement.
Collected Poems is vital...and reminds us that Longley is not only
a lyric poet of the first rank, but a clear-sighted observer who
knows the real world when he sees it, even as he knows that it
cannot be grasped, only celebrated, or interrogated, or mourned -
which is to say, given its due - as it passes
*Irish Times*
A wonderfully capacious book, at once stringent and delicate
*Observer Books of the Year*
Of the modern writers who deal with conflict, I believe Michael
Longley, whose father fought in the First World War, is the
greatest figure we have. I carry his work with me to the war zones
of the world
*The Times*
An essential book for anyone interested in poetry
*Times Literary Supplement*
Michael Longley's Collected Poems brings together in one
beautifully designed volume the work of this marvellous poet,
reminding us, if we needed reminding, of the authority of his voice
and the beauty of his line
*Irish Times Books of the Year*
[A] gravely beautiful book - the record of four decades of a
practice which has helped keep lyric poetry in English both
necessary and alive
*Poetry Review*
In his truest and most enduring poems, Longley manages, in Yeats'
words, to hold justice and reality in a single thought without
doing violence to either. The many poems in which Longley succeeds
in this aim are among the great poems of our time
*Guardian*
Michael Longley is a lyric poet with perfect pitch. His formal
elegance seems effortless...he is a master in an old, great
tradition
*The Times*
Michael Longley's Collected Poems delineate a 40-year achievement
whose scale can now be appreciated
*Irish Times Books of the Year*
Collected Poems is vital...and reminds us that Longley is
not only a lyric poet of the first rank, but a clear-sighted
observer who knows the real world when he sees it, even as he knows
that it cannot be grasped, only celebrated, or interrogated, or
mourned - which is to say, given its due - as it passes -- John
Burnside * Irish Times *
A wonderfully capacious book, at once stringent and delicate
-- Andrew Motion * Observer Books of the Year *![]() |
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