Seamus Heaney Home

An Afternoon with Michael Longley

Michael Longley, a close friend and contemporary of Seamus
Heaney, was the first poet to read in The Helicon back in 2016 during our
opening weekend. We are delighted to welcome him back to read from his work as
part of our Wintering Out celebrations, as the collection is dedicated to him.

One of Northern Ireland’s foremost contemporary poets, Michael Longley was born in 1939 and is renowned for the quiet beauty of his compact, meditative lyrics. He is 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. His most recent collection The Candlelight Master was published in 2020. In 2001 Longley was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and he is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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