Michael Longley
Michael Longley, CBE ( born July 27, 1939 in Belfast ) is a Northern Irish poet.
Life and work
Michael Longley's parents came from London and settled in 1927 to Belfast. He has a twin brother, Peter, and a sister, Wendy.
In 1958 he participated at Trinity College in Dublin to study classical philology on, then he worked as a teacher in Dublin, London and Belfast. In Belfast in 1964 he came in contact with The Belfast Group, an informal circle of poets, in the then Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon wrong. In 1969 he published his first volume of poetry. He also wrote for radio by the BBC, the literary journal Encounter and the satirical magazine The Phoenix.
His poetry shows influences of classical metric and classical mythology, but has contemporary historical or contemporary relevance. Preferred subjects are nature and the Northern Ireland conflict. He has received, among others The 1991 Whitbread Poetry Award, 2000, the Hawthornden Prize and the TS Eliot Prize in 2001 and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
Longley worked from 1970 to 1991 for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of Aosdána. He is married and has three children.