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A collection of Michael Longley’s greatest poems, spanning an extraordinary career of sixty years as one of the Belfast triumverate, alongside Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon
‘One of the world’s greats’ IRISH NEWS
‘A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders’ SEAMUS HEANEY
The title of Michael Longley’s New Selected Poems is taken from his poem ‘Ash Keys’. The wing-shaped, wind-borne seeds of the ash-tree might be an image for poems in search of their readers. This selection, based on thirteen individual collections, represents Longley’s unusual range as a lyric poet.
It shows how his themes, genres and forms have evolved and interlaced since the 1960s. Love, violence, the natural world, art, psychodrama, family, the Great War, the Homeric past and Northern Ireland’s troubled present cohabit in these pages – as do depth, wit and beauty.
‘His work is of the level that would be befitting of a Novel Prize for Literature’ MICHAEL D HIGGINS
‘Michael Longley’s latest lines are just as restless and as promising as his first’ Times Literary Supplement
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Michael Longley is a lyric poet with perfect pitch. His formal elegance seems effortless… A master in an old, great tradition
Times
A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders
Seamus Heaney, author of Death of a Naturalist
His poems rest on the page like driftwood, seasoned and made beautiful by an ocean of experience
Helen Dunmore, author of Ingo
One of the most perfect poets alive. There is something in his work both ancient and modern. I read him as I might check the sky for stars
Sebastian Barry, author of Old God’s Time
Michael Longley’s poems have matched a sense of history and the brutal present with a recurrent feeling for the lyrical moment and the fragility of experience
James Fenton, author of Yellow Tulips
Michael Longley is a great poet whose work will endure while the English language does
Donald Hall, author of Ox-Cart Man
Longley has all the necessary gifts – precision, the celebrant’s tongue, and that touch of mystery that sets certain poets apart
George Mackay Brown, author of Magnus
This new selection of his [Longley’s] poetry, drawing on his 13 published collections, shows his range and power. He is one of the great poets of landscape, as well as a powerful, pained commentator on Northern Ireland’s troubled history
Herald
With Ash Keys we gain access to the past and relive its colour… Now, more than ever, Longley’s work deserves to be widely read and treasured
Sunday Times
Michael Longley’s latest lines are just as restless and as promising as his first
Times Literary Supplement
