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Life
| 1939- [fam. ‘Mike’]; b. 27 July 1939; Belfast of parents who moved from Clapham Common, London, to Belfast in 1927; his f., Col. Richard Longley, was a First World War veteran and recipient of the Military Cross who re-enlisted in 1939-45 and died much later of cancer from his WWI wounds - at first furniture salesman and then fund-raiser for hospitals and war-memorial; grew up at Bristow Park off Balmoral Avenue in Belfast - without a ‘hinterland of aunts, uncles and cousins’; twin brother Peter and sis. Wendy (b.1930 - a ‘second mother’); ed. Royal Belfast Academical Institution {RBAI], where he was taught Classics by Charlie Fay - who knitted in class; played on the school Rugby First side; entered Trinity College, Dublin [TCD] where he was joined by Derek Mahon [q.v.], also from RBAI, in his second year - and ‘spurred each other on’; studied under W. B. Stanford and grad. in Classics [Hons] with ‘a mediocre degree because I didn’t work’; |
| met Edna Broderick, dg. of a Catholic academic at TCD, at TCD entrance exams, 1958; m. Edna, with Mahon as his best man, 1964; shared Eric Gregory Award for Young Poets with Mahon in 1965; worked initially as a as Classics teacher in Dublin, London, and the RBAI (‘I loved teaching’); left teaching to joion the NI Arts Council, at first as a a temporary Exhibitions Officer, 1970; served as Director of Literature and the Traditional Arts, 1970-92 [vars. Combined Arts to 1991/1993; 21 years]; won Eric Gregory Award, 1965; with Seamus Heaney, ed. Northern Review, 1965-69; contrib. to Three Regional Voices (1968); issued No Continuing City (1969), first poetry collection; ed. Over the Moon and Under the Stars (NI Arts Council 1971) [anthol. of children’s poetry from Northern Ireland]; ed. Causeway: The Arts in Ulster (1971), a successor to Sam Hanna Bell, Nesca Robb and John Hewitt’s The Arts in Ulster (1951); |
| issued An Exploded View (1973), collection; letter to The Irish Times on poetry and the Troubles (18 June 1974) occasioned by another by Padraic Fiacc advertising his anthology on the Troubles in The Wearing of the Black [‘The artist would be inhuman if he didn’t respond to tragic events in his own community, and an irresponsible artist if he didn’t seek to endorse that response imaginatively’]; read with Paul Muldoon at Kilkenny Arts Festival, Summer 1974; appeared with others in Penguin Modern Poets [2nd ser.; No. 10] (1975) - the series being ed. by Anthony Thwaite; issued Man Lying on a Wall (1976); issued The Echo Gate (1979), winner of Poetry Society Choice, in the same year as his mother’s death - with whom he only latterly became close; issued Selected Poems 1963-1980 (1981); issued an autobiographical essay “Tu’Penny Stung” in Poetry Review (1985), and later separately with Lagan Press; received award of American Irish Foundation, 1985; |
| issued Selected Poems of Louis MacNeice (1988); addressed Cultural Traditions symposium at Coleraine, 5 March 1989; issued Gorse Fires (1991), highly acclaimed collection - often spoken of as a return to poetry after long silence - dealing with Northern Troubles often in the perspective of Homer’s Odyssey, World War II and the Holocaust; winner of the Whitbread Prize; treated dismissively in the Field Day Anthology of Irish Literature, ed. Seamus Deane (1992); appt. writer-in-residence at TCD, 1993; his poem “Ceasefire” published by John Banville, Lit. Ed., in The Irish Times (3 Sept. 1994), on the weekend immediately following the on IRA announcement of ceasefire - and thence treated as an iconic image of the Peace Process; contrib. poem to TCD Quartrocentenary Catalogue (1995); published “A Prayer” during church-burning arising from Drumcree crisis (Irish Times, 25 Jan. 1997); issued Broken Dishes (1998), fifteen elegies; issued Selected Poems (1998); with Sarah Longley (his dg.), issued Out of the Cold (1999), being ‘drawings and poems for Christmas’; |
| issued The Weather in Japan (2000), winner of Irish Times Literature Prize, Hawthornden Prize, 2000, and T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry (£10,000), and The Irish Times Irish Poetry Award, 2001; awarded Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, April 2001; edited Twentieth-century Irish Poems (2002), indulging his ‘own preference for the intensity of the lyric’ (Preface); recipient of the Wilfred Owen Award, 2003 and appointed CBE, also 2003; issued Snow Water (2004), for which he was awarded the Premio Librex Montale Prize (Milan), 2005; issued Collected Poems (2006) with Jonathan Cape; read at Fota House on Fota Island, Cork, 2007; his papers are held at Emory University (Atlanta) as Collection 774; there is an RTÉ documentary profile; appt. to Ireland Chair of Poetry, giving his inaug. lecture (“A Jovial Hullaballo: Discovering Poetry”), at QUB on 14 Feb. 2008; |
| delivered a second lecture at the John Hume Inst. for Global Irish Studies, UCD, 1 Feb. 2010; awarded CBE, 2010; issued A Hundred Doors (2011), winner of the DLR Poetry Now prize, being a collection of poems in the form of tributes to his family with Edna - a dg. Rebecca and her sons Ben and Eddie; a son Daniel and his children Jacob, Conor and Catherine, and a dg. Sarah, with her dg. Maisie; incls. the citation of his father’s Military Cross (‘better than a poem’); there is a commissioned portrait by Jeffrey Morgan in the Waterfront Hall, Belfast; Seamus Heaney’s poem “Personal Helicon” was dedicated to Longley while “Letter to Seamus Heaney” in Exploded View (1973) returned the compliment; read again with Muldoon, Kilkenny Arts Festival, 13 Aug. 2011; issued The Stairwell (2014), a new collection incorporating an elegy-series for his twin brother, winner of Griffin Prize; awarded the Freedom of Belfast, March 2015; with Jane Munro, joint-winner of Griffin International Poetry Prize, June 2015; issued Inglenook (1026), homage to Edna O’Brien; gave the Annual W. G. Sebald Lecture at the British Library on 20 Feb. 2017; forthcoming collection, Angel Hill (June 2017), shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize; Seamus Heaney has called him ‘a keeper of the cultural estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders’; he as three children with Edna (Rebecca, Daniel and Sarah). DIW DIL ORM FDA HAM OCIL |
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| Michael Longley - British Museum W. G. Sebald Lecture (20th Feb. 2017) |
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“Remembering Carrigskeewaun” |
| —Available in Poetry Archive - online (with other poems); see text-version in Quotations- attached. |
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Bibliographical Details
Causeway: The Arts in Ulster, ed., Michael Longley (NI Arts Council: Gill & Macmillan 1971), designed by Ralph Dobson; cover ‘Mourne Landscape’ by Colin Middleton. Contents: Longley, Introduction [7]; C. E. B. Brett, The Architectural Heritage [11]; Robert McKinstry, Contemporary Architecture [27]; Kenneth Kamison, Painting and sculpture [43]; John Cronin, Prose [71]; Sam Hanna Bell, Theatre [83]; Longley, Poetry [95]; Seán Ó Baoill, Irish Traditional Music [118]; Solly Lipsitz, jazz [131]; E. W. J. Boucher, Classical Music [138]; George Thompson, The Ulster Folk Museum [153]; The Modes (app. to Irish Trad. Music) [171]; Discography [176]; Notes on Contributors [178]; Acknowledgements [1181].The Lake Without a Name: Poems of Mayo (Belfast: Blackstaff Press [2005]), 52pp., ill. [wood engravings by Jeffrey Morgan; 27 cm.; ltd. edn. of 275 copies]. This special edition brings together for the first time the best of Michael’s Mayo poems and reflects the intricacies of his thirty-year love affair with the Mayo landscape and, more particularly, with the townland of Carrigskeewaun, where he has been going with his family since 1970. The forty-nine poems in The Lake Without a Name are, to use Michael’s words from the preface to this edition, ‘consecrated by the right company’ - twenty-eight beautifully crafted wood engravings by artist and friend Jeffrey Morgan. The Lake Without a Name is the fruit of an enduring friendship between poet and artist. The book represents a unique collaboration between two extraordinary craftsmen. This fine press limited edition of The Lake Without a Name consists of 275 signed and numbered copies. It is set in 11/15 Garamond and is printed on 170gsm mould-made Zerkall paper with a deckle edge. The wood engravings - 8 large and 20 of assorted sizes - were fashioned on endgrain boxwood that was supplied by blockmaker Chris Daunt of Gateshead. The edition is printed letterpress at Libanus Press, Marlborough, in Wiltshire, and is bound at the Fine Bindery, Wellingborough. It is sewn and quarter-bound with Fabriano Ingres boards and Ratchford Colarado Liffey cloth with matching head and tail bands and matching endpapers. The front board is blocked with a wood engraving. The edition is presented in a lined slipcase with a bow edge. The first seventy-five copies of the book contain a signed and numbered four-page insert with a specially commissioned poem by Michael and an additional wood engraving by Jeffrey, which is unique to this limited edition. These seventy-five copies have a special quarter-binding of Harmatan goat leather. (See COPAC - online; accessed 23.01.2015.)
Wavelengths: Various Translations (London: Enitharmon 2009), 32pp. - a companion volume to his previous Enitharmon chapbooks Cenotaph of Snow (2003) and The Rope-Makers (2005), printed at The Stonehouse Fine Press (letter press); contains a selection of the translations which Longley describes as ‘fundamental to my imaginative development - versions mainly from Latin and Greek - which reflect my preoccupations and feel to me like my own poems’; includes translations of two Greek lyrics dating from 1962, versions after the love elegies of Sextus Propertius, and versions from the Romanian poet Marin Sorescu, the Dutch poets Hendrik Marsman and Ida Gerhardt, and a poem in French by the Welsh painter Gwen John.
Cenotaph of Snow: Sixty Poems about War (London: Enitharmon Press 2003), 50pp. Longley writes: ‘These are poems about war, not war poems. You have to be a war poet to write war poems. I am a non-combatant drawn to the subject of war for a number of reasons, including: 1) my father fought in the First World War, was decorated for bravery and - an old-fashioned patriot - joined up again in 1939; 2) my native Ulster has been disfigured for thirty years by fratricidal violence; 3) I revere the poets of 1914-1918 (Owen, Rosenberg, Sassoon, Sorley, Blunden, Thomas, Jones) and their successors of 1939-1945 (Douglas, Lewis); 4) in my forties I rediscovered Homer, first the Odyssey and then the Iliad which is the most powerful of all war poems as well as being the greatest poem about death. My versions of passages from Homer have allowed me to say things that I might not otherwise have been able to articulate. These, then, are the preoccupations behind Cenotaph of Snow.’
Selected Poems (London: Jonathan Cape 1998), 130pp. [ded. Eamon Hughes and Bob Purdie]. CONTENTS: from No Continuing City (1963-68): “Epithalamion” [1]; “No Continuing City” [4]; “Circe” [7]; “Persephone” [8]; “Nausicaa” [8]; “Narcissus” [8]; “A Personal Statement, for Seamus Heaney” [9]; “Freeze-up” [12]; “The osprey” [13]; “The Hebrides”, for Eavan Boland [14]; “In Memoriam” [18]; “Elegy for Fats Waller”, for Solly Lipsitz [20]; “Homage to Dr Johnson”, for Philip Hobsbaum [21]; “Leaving Inishmore” [22]; “Journey out of Essex, or John Clare’s Escape out of the Madhouse” [23]. From An Exploded View (1968-72): Caravan” [24]; “Swans Mating” [25]; “Galapagos” [25]; “The Corner of the Eye: Kingfisher ” [26]; “Wren; Dipper; Robin” [27]; “Badger, for Raymond Piper” [28]; “Casualty” [30]; “Readings, for Peter Longley” [31]; “Letter to Derek Mahon” [32]; “Letter to Searnus Heaney” [34]; “Wounds” [36]; “In Memory of Gerard Dillon” [37]; “The West” [38]; “Skara Brae, for Sheila and Denis Smyth” [39]; “Ghost Town” [40]; “Three Posthumous Pieces” [41]; “Alibis” [42]; “Options”, for Michael Allen [44]. From Man Lying on a Wall (1972-75): “In Mayo” [46]; “Flora” [48]; “Landscape” [49]; “Points of the Compass”, for John Hewitt [50]; “Halcyon” [52]; “Master of Ceremonies” [53]; “Edward Thomas’s War Diary, 1 Jan.-8 April 1917” [54]; “Fleance” [55]; “Company” [56]; “Man Lying on a Wall, Homage to L. S. Lowry” [58]. From The Echo Gate (1975-79): Obsequies” [59]; “Wreaths: The Civil Servant; The Greengrocer” [60], The Linen Workers” [61]; “Second Sight” [62]; “Ash Keys” [63]; “Spring Tide” [64]; “Frozen Rain” [66]; “Thaw” [66]; Mayo Monologues: “Brothers” [67]; “Self-heal” [68]; “Bog Cotton” [69]; “The War Poets” [70]; “Peace, after Tibullus” [71]; “Sulpicia” [74]; “Grace Darling” [75]; “On Mweelrea” [76]; “The Linen Industry” [77]; “Self-portrait” [78]. From New Poems (1979-84): “Patchwork” [79]; “Maggie Moore’s” [80]; “Love Poet” [81]; “Hallowe’en” [81]; “On Slieve Gullion, for Douglas Carson” [82]; “Smoke in the Branches: The Disfigurement of Fergus; The Grey of Macha; The Bewilderment of Muircertach; The Death of Mac Glas” [83]; “Markings, for Sarah” [84]; “The White Butterfly” [85]. From Gorse Fires (1984-90): Sea Shanty” [86]; “Between Hovers” [87]; “Detour” [88]; “Gorse Fires” [89]; “Remembering Carrigskeewaun” [90]; “Homecoming” [91]; “An Amish Rug” [92]; “Couchette” [93]; “Laertes” [94]; “Anticleia” [95]; “Terezín” [96]; “Ghetto” [97]; “Argos” [100]; “The Butchers” [101]; “The Ice-cream Man” [102]; “Ponies” [103]. From The Ghost Orchid (1990-94): “Form” [104]; “Autumn Lady’s Tresses” [105]; “Watercolour, for Geoffrey Morgan” [106]; “Gretta Bowen’s Emendations” [106]; “According to Pythagoras” [107]; “Spiderwoman” [108]; “A Flowering” [109]; “Mr 10½, after Robert Mapplethorpe” [110]; “Massive Lovers, after Katsushika Hokusai” [110]; “A Grain of Rice” [111]; “Chinese Objects” [112]; “The Scissors Ceremony” [113]; “Snow-hole” [114]; “The Eel-trap” [114]; “Phoenix” [115]; “The Campfires 116]; “The Helmet” [117]; “Poppies” [117]; “Ceasefire” [118]; “Phernios & Medon” [119]; “The Fishing Party” [120]; “Birdsong” [121]; “Headstone” [122]; “The White Garden” [123]; “The Ghost Orchid” [123]; “Chinese Occasions” [124]; “River & Fountain” [125]; “Snow Bunting, for Sarah” [128]; “The Oar” [129]; “Out There” [130]. Acknowledgements [132].
[ See COPAC record - online; accessed 23.01.2015. ]
Sea-Asters ({London:] Fine Press Poetry 2015), 12 poems by Longley, with matching pen & ink ills. by Sarah Longley [the poet’s daughter]; of which three poems appeared in The Stairwell (Cape); designed and printed by John Grice, Evergreen Press, Gloucestershire; printed from Centaur 16 pt. type on Zerkall paper and bound at the Fine Book Bindery, Wellingborough, England; standard edition, 75 numbered and copies, signed by both Michael and Sarah Longley - £95; deluxe edition housed in a slipcase; 26 copies lettered A to Z, likewise signed - £140 presentation edition, leather-bound and housed in a Solander box; 5 copies numbered I to V, likewise signed - £500. [incls “The Thistle - in memory of Bob Purdey”] Note: Published May 2015 while Longley’s “The Dipper’s Range” was published by Fine Press Poetry in October 2016. The publisher is Andrew Moorhouse of Fine Poetry Press, Rochdale, England; there is a website at www.finepresspoetry.com [accessed 05.08.2017].
20th-Century Irish poems, selected by Michael Longley (London: Faber 2002), 134pp. [Bibl. refs., pp.131-32; index. Incls poems in Irish with English translations. CONTENTS: Donal Og / Lady Gregory; The Cattle / Katharine Tynan; The Wild Swans at Coole / W. B. Yeats; Broken Dreams / W. B. Yeats; To a Squirrel at Kyle-na-no / W. B. Yeats; Easter 1916 / W. B. Yeats; A Last Confession / W. B. Yeats; High Talk / W. B. Yeats; In Glencullen / J. M. Synge; The Yellow Bittern / Thomas MacDonagh; The Goat Paths / James Stephens; Ad Limina / Joseph Campbell; She Moved Through the Fair / Padraic Colum; Tilly / James Joyce; The Wife of Llew / Francis Ledwidge; For France / Helen Waddell; The Lost Heifer / Austin Clarke; The Planter’s Daughter / Austin Clarke; Over the Water / Patrick MacDonogh; Father and Son / F. R. Higgins; Advice to Lovers / Frank O’Connor; Innocence / Patrick Kavanagh; Epic / Patrick Kavanagh; In Memory of my Mother / Patrick Kavanagh; A Flask of Brandy / Padraic Fallon; Substance and Shadow / John Hewitt; A Local Poet / John Hewitt; Roundelay / Samuel Beckett; Mayfly / Louis MacNeice; Brother Fire / Louis MacNeice; Charon / Louis MacNeice; Glor Acastora / Mairtin Ó Direain; Axle Song / Mairtin Ó Direain; Field Day / W. R. Rodgers; Just an Old Sweet Song / Donagh MacDonagh; Malairt / Sean Ó Riordain; Mirror / Sean Ó Riordain; Reo / Sean Ó Riordain; Frost / Sean Ó Riordain; The Toy Horse / Valentin Iremonger; Portrait of a Woman from the Fayum / Fergus Allen; Athdheirdre / Maire Mhac An Tsaoi; A Second Deirdre / Maire Mhac An Tsaoi; The British Connection / Padraic Fiacc; Stormpetrel / Richard Murphy; Sunup / Richard Murphy; Into Their True Gentleness / Pearse Hutchinson; Hen Woman / Thomas Kinsella; Wyncote, Pennsylvania: A Gloss / Thomas Kinsella; All Legendary Obstacles / John Montague; A Bright Day / John Montague; Kisses / Tom MacIntyre; Bread / Brendan Kennelly; From the Irish / James Simmons; Letting Go / Michael Coady; Mossbawn: Sunlight / Seamus Heaney; Casualty / Seamus Heaney; The Harvest Bow / Seamus Heaney; An Dobharchu Gonta / Michael Hartnett; The Wounded Otter / Michael Hartnett; Death of an Irishwoman / Michael Hartnett; Women Going / Eamon Grennan; The Studio / Derek Mahon; A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford / Derek Mahon; Tractatus / Derek Mahon; The Black Lace Fan My Mother Gave Me / Eavan Boland; Fireman’s Lift / Eilean Ni Chuilleanain; Studying the Language / Eilean Ni Chuilleanain; In Memory: The Miami Showband / Paul Durcan; Birth of a Coachman / Paul Durcan; The Hay Carrier / Paul Durcan; A Drink of Spring / John Ennis; Casement on Banna / Bernard O’Donoghue; The Builder / Frank Ormsby; Snow / Ciaran Carson; Jacta Est Alea / Ciaran Carson; Of Difference Does it Make / Tom Paulin; Crannlaoch / Michael Davitt; Hearts of Oak / Michael Davitt; Faith / Medbh McGuckian; From the Dressing-Room / Medbh McGuckian; Ship of Death / Kerry Hardie; Notes for a Love Poem / Robert Johnstone; The Cure for Warts / Paul Muldoon; Gathering Mushrooms / Paul Muldoon; Aftermath / Paul Muldoon; The Seamstress / Harry Clifton; Child of the Empire / Gerald Dawe; Ceist na Teangan / Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill; The Language Issue / Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill; Margadh na Gruaige / Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill; The Hair Market / Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill; Wading / Matthew Sweeney; Silk / Maurice Riordan; Penance / Tony Curtis; The Wisdom of AE / Thomas McCarthy; Opals / Julie O’Callaghan; Water / Dennis O’Driscoll; The Flute Girl’s Dialogue / Rita Ann Higgins; Child Burial / Paula Meehan; The Sea Urchin / Mary O’Malley; Night / Moya Cannon; All Burials Are at Sea / Aidan Mathews; Fiacha an tSolais / Cathal Ó Searcaigh; The E. S. B. Bill / Cathal Ó Searcaigh; Throwing the Beads / Sean Dunne; For Jessica / Sean Lysaght; Latin as a Foreign Language / Michael O’Loughlin; Modern Times / Greg Delanty; The One Dim Thing / Peter Sirr; A Pause / Peter McDonald.
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Criticism| Monographs | |
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See also April Elizabeth Warman, Modern poetry’s Relation to the Dead (DPhil. Oxon 2007), 314pp. [i.e., lvs.; deals with Geoffrey Hill; Longley, Paul Muldoon; supervised by Bernard O’Donoghue]. |
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| Articles & chapters | |
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| [ See contents of Colby Quarterly [Michael Longley Issue], eds. Jody Allen Randolph & Douglas Archibald] (Sept. 2003) - as infra. | |
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| [ See extracts from these and others under Commentary - infra. ] | |
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Colby Quarterly [Special Michael Longley Issue, guest eds. Jody Allen Randolph & Douglas Archibald] 39:3 (Sept. 2003). CONTENTS: Jody Allen Randolph and Douglas Archibald, Introduction [189-92]; Eavan Boland, ‘“Early Conversations” [193-97]; Fran Brearton, ‘“The Privilege/Of vertigo”: Reading Michael Longley in the 1960s ’ [198-214]; Medbh McGuckian, ‘Michael Longley as a Metaphysical ’ [215-20]; Richard Rankin Russell, ‘Inscribing Cultural Corridors: Michael Longley’s Contribution to Reconciliation in Northern Ireland ’ [221-40]; Rui Carvalho Homem, ‘“Pawprints in marble”: Memorialization and Visual Translation in the Poetry of Michael Longley ’ [241-57]; John Redmond, ‘Fighting for Balance: The Influence of Ted Hughes on Michael Longley ’ [258-69]; Wesley McNair, ‘Michael Longley's Journey to the Real World in The Weather in Japan ’ [270-75]; Jonathan Cape, ‘Poems from Snow Water ’ [276-93]; Jody Allen Randolph, ‘Interview: Michael Longley and Jody Allen Randolph’ [293-308]. (Index and pdf. copies available online; accessed 05.11.2023]. |
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Commentary
See infra
Quotations
See infra.
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References
Blake Morrison & Andrew Motion, eds., The Penguin Bo ok
of Contemporary British Poetry (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1982), contains ‘Wounds’, ‘Second Sight’, ‘The Linen Workers’,
‘Swans Mating’, ‘Love Poem’, ‘Mayo Monologues
[‘Brothers’, ‘Housekeeper’, ‘Self-heal’,
‘Arrest’] (pp.811-86.)
| A Selection of Poems by Michael Longley - available on C. Kelly’s Longley Page at Teachnet.ie (2010) |
| “Badger” - “Wounds” - “Poteen” - “Carrigskeewaun” - “Wreaths” - “Last Requests” - “Self-heal” - “An Amish Rug” - “Laertes” - “Ceasefire”. |
| —[online; accessed 19.10.2010; unavailable at 23.11.2012.] |
Frank Ormsby, ed., Northern Windows: An Anthology of Ulster Autobiography (Belfast: Blackstaff 1987), selects ‘Tu’penny Stung’, from Poetry Review, Vol. 74 (January 1985), here pp.195-206.
Peter Fallon & Seán Golden, eds., Soft Day: A Miscellany of Contemporary Irish Writing (Dublin: Wolfhound Press; Notre Dame 1980), selects ‘In Mayo’; ‘The Goose’; ‘Ars Poetica’.
Andrew Carpenter & Peter Fallon, eds., The Writers: A Sense of Place (Dublin: O’Brien Press 1980), Four poems, ‘The White Butterfly’; ‘The Third Light’; ‘Ogham Stone’, i.m. Seán Ó Baoill; ‘Communications’, in with photo-port., pp.108-10.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, selects An Exploded View; Man Lying on a Wall; The Echo Gate [1375-77]; 1433, BIOG [supra].
Patrick Crotty, ed., Modern Irish Poetry: An Anthology (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 1995), selects “In Memoriam” [220]; “Caravan” [222]; “Wounds” [223]; “Ghost Town” [224]; “Man Lying on a Wall” [225]; “Wreaths: The Civil Servant [225]; The Greengrocer [226]; The Linen Workers” [226]; from “Mayo Monologues”, “Self-heal” [227]; “The Linen Industry” [227]; “Between Hovers” [228]; Homeric Poems: “Laertes” [229], “Argos”, “The Butchers” [230], “Phemios & Medon” [231]; “River & Fountain” [231].
Books in Print (1994), No Continuing City (London: Macmillan / Chester Springs, PA 1969); An Exploded View, Poems, 1968-1972 (London: Gollancz 1973) [0 575 01666 3]; Man Lying on a Wall, Poems 1972-1975 (London: Gollancz 1976) [0 575 02110 1]; The Echo Gate, Poems 1975-1979 (London: Secker & Warburg 1979) [0 43625 680 0]; Selected Poems 1963-1980 (N. Carolina: Wake Forest UP 1981; Secker & Warburg 1991, 1994) [0 436 25680 0]; Poems 1963-1983 (Edinburgh: Salamander Press; Dublin: Gallery Press 1984; Harmondsworth: Penguin 1985; Secker & Warburg; Gallery 1991) [0436 25676 2; 0 900597 45 3]; Gorse Fires (London: Secker & Warburg 1991, 1994) [0 43625 674 6]; Baucis and Philemon, after Ovid (London: J. Allen 1993) [0 900597 45 3].
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| Longley Snr.’s official citation for the Military Cross (1918) |
| ‘For: Conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty / In leading the waves of his company in a raid / And being the first to enter both objectives / In spite of a severe shrapnel wound in the thigh. // After killing several of the enemy himself, / He directed the fire of his Lewis gunners / And rifle bombers on to a working party / Of over 100 of the enemy, and controlled/ The mopping-up of the enemy dugouts.’ |
| —Rendered as verse by Longley; quoted in Kate Kellaway, review of A Hundred Doors, in The Observer (20 March 2011) [available online]. |
Dublin Magazine [1st issue] (Spring 1966) contains an early Longley poem, “Dr Johnson on the Hebrides” ending, ‘His downcast eyes, riding out the brainstorm, / His weatherproof enormous head at home.’ (p.37.) Note also Eavan Boland, ‘Shakepeare’, in same issue, which shares with the above the word sycophant in the first line (p.37)
Translators three: Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, and Paul Muldoon are three of the translators of Martin Soresci, The Biggest Egg in the World, ed. Edna Longley (Bloodaxe ?1992).
Causeway Away!: Longley commenced with Board of Directors of Causeway, Cultural Relations Journal (No. 1, Autumn 1993), and resigned before the appearance of the second issue (Spring 1994) ‘having seen the magazine sagely launched and in secure hands’ [Tony Canavan, ed.]; the first issue of the journal appears contemporaneously under his name in Whitaker, &c.
No abiding city: The psalmist’s phrase ‘We have no abiding city here’ was employed by Thomas Kelly in Hymn No. 216 of the Church of Ireland Hymnal (1960, 1987), and thence provided the title for an early collection by Longley [var. 514 New Church of Ireland Hymnal.]
Sheugh: The last poem in Gorse Fires incl. terms sheugh, and ‘bog asphodel’; on the former, see Ciaran Carson mocking usage in Causeway (Spring 1996); on the latter, see the following from Louis MacNeice’s The Strings are False: ‘If I had one foot posed over untrodden asphodel, the other was still clamped to the ankle in the bogs’.
War as Memory: his Longley’s poem “Wounds” provides the basis of a discussion in the final chapter of Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) where it is taken to exemplify the war as ‘an archetype for subsequent violence - as well as a criticism of it’ (p.324; see ).
“‘Mick’ Magennis, VC”: “Ocean”, a homage to James (“Mick”) Magennis, VC, was printed in The Irish Times (4 April 1998), appearing alongside a review of George Fleming, Magennis VC (224pp.), a biography of the4 Belfast-born Catholic who, after his heroic adventure sticking limpet mines to the Japanese cruiser “Takao”, returned to Belfast to be ignored by both sides of the community. Longley’s poem collates his achievement with Merce Cunningham’s dance-troupe performance “Ocean” at the Waterfront Hall.
Ireland Chair of Poetry (Inaugural lecture, Spring 2008): Longley gave an inaugural lecture in the form of ‘an autobiography in poetry’ describing how he discovered poetry and celebrating some of the poems and poets who have mattered to him - from childhood memories of the King James Bible and the discovery of Keats, de la Mare, and Yeats onwards in his teens to living Irish writers such as Patrick Kavanagh and Louis MacNeice. His first attempts to write poetry (a ‘combination of hormonal commotion and aesthetic awakening’) led on to meetings with Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney, their mutual encouragement and shared interests, and to a lasting enthusiasm for poetry, past and present. An edition of 150 copies was printed as chapbooks in Hahnemuhle Bugra Butten wrappers, being one of the last books printed by Sebastian Carter at his Rampant Lions letterpress before he retired in Dec. 2008. (See COPAC notice online; accessed 15.10.2010.)
100s ofepiphanies: ‘At the unveilling of that threshold stone [of the Lyric Theatre, Belfast], fifteen months ago, Longley recalled his “decades of plays, hundred of epiphanies, thoughs of hours of fun and enlightenment’ at the Lyric.’ (See Jane Coyle, ‘A Dramatic Crucible Takes Shape’, in Irish Times, 8 Jan. 2011, Weekend, p.6; see further under Seamus Heaney, supra.)
TV: See RTÉ film on Michael Longley’s country in western Mayo, ‘Corner of the Eye’ (re-broadcast C4, 17 April 1993 at 7.00 p.m.)
T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry(£10,000) won my Michael Longley in 2001, in competition with Walcott, Thom Gunn, Anne Stephenson and Douglas Dunn.
Joint Celebration: ‘Seamus Heaney and Micheal Longley: A Celebration with the Ulster Orchestra’ took place at at 8pm on Saturday, 17 Oct. 2011 at the Belfast Waterfront Hall as part of the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen’s University. Seamus Heaney’s early poem “Personal Helicon” is dedicated to Longley.
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