Michael Longley



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

Life and career
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.

In North America, Michael Longley is published by Wake Forest University Press. His wife Edna Longley is also an influential critic on modern Irish and British poetry.

Recognition
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.

Publications

 * 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)