The President and Members of the Academy have, with great sadness, learnt of the death of Michael Longley HRHA. He was RHA Professor of Literature for the past 10 years.
One of Northern Ireland’s foremost poets, Longley was born on July 27, 1939. Michael was renowned for the quiet beauty of his compact, meditative lyrics. He was the author of many poetry collections, including Angel Hill (2017); The Stairwell (2015), which received the 2015 International Griffin Poetry Prize; The Ghost Orchid (2012); The Weather in Japan (2000), which won the Irish Times Literature Prize for Poetry, the Hawthornden Prize, and the T.S. Eliot Prize; and Gorse Fires (1991), winner of the Whitbread Poetry Prize. In 2001 Longley was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Longley’s work engaged diverse subjects, including Homeric literature; the landscape of Carrigskeewaun, Co. Mayo; jazz, Walter Mitty; and the politics of Northern Ireland. On the public and political responsibilities of being a Northern Irish poet, he has commented, “Though the poet’s first duty must be to his imagination, he has other obligations—and not just as a citizen. He would be inhuman if he did not respond to tragic events in his own community, and a poor artist if he did not seek to endorse that response imaginatively.”
The Belfast poet’s many volumes of poetry culminated in a collection published last year to celebrate his 85th birthday. He died on 22 January 2025.
He recorded one of his best known poems, Remembering Carrigskeewaun, for the Poetry Archive. Listen here.
Guardian obituary here.
Irish Times obituary here.
Photo: Murdo MacLeod, The Guardian.
