Promotional Information

A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders.' Seamus Heaney

About the Author

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 lived and worked with his wife, the critic Edna Longley, until his death in 2025. For his lifetime achievement in poetry he was awarded the 2022 Feltrinelli Poetry Prize, and in 2024 the International Roma Prize.

Reviews

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 *
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 -- Fergal Keane * 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 -- John Banville * Irish Times Books of the Year *