Michael Longley

Michael Longley was born in Belfast in 1939. After reading classics at Trinity College, Dublin, he taught in schools in Belfast, Dublin and London, joining the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in 1970 as Combined Arts Director. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2001 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2000. His poetry engages with the natural landscape and its wildlife in intimate detail, as well as presenting them as a counterbalance to the often violent contemporary urban world....See more

Michael Longley was born in Belfast in 1939. After reading classics at Trinity College, Dublin, he taught in schools in Belfast, Dublin and London, joining the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in 1970 as Combined Arts Director. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2001 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2000. His poetry engages with the natural landscape and its wildlife in intimate detail, as well as presenting them as a counterbalance to the often violent contemporary urban world. His Collected Poems was published in 2006, and in 2007 he was appointed Professor of Poetry for Ireland. See less