Michael Longley was today hailed as one of Ireland’s greatest poets following his death aged 85.
Irish president Michael D Higgins led the tributes, while SDLP leader Claire Hanna described him as a prince of the English language.
Born in Belfast in 1939 and educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, Longley studied classics at Trinity College, Dublin.
At Trinity he met his future wife Edna and after their marriage in the mid-1960s they settled back in Belfast.
Longley published his first collection of poetry, No Continuing City, when he was 30.
In 1994, he wrote his most famous poem, ‘Ceasefire’.
He was awarded many international prizes, including the prestigious Feltrinelli International Poetry Prize in 2022.
His collections of poetry were also awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Irish Times Poetry Now Award, the American Ireland Fund Literary Award, and the Griffin International Prize.
In 2001 Longley received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, and in 2003 the Wilfred Owen Award.
He was appointed a CBE in 2010.
Paying tribute, Mr Higgins said: “I regarded him as a peerless poet with at least three poetic lives. It is, however, the generosity of his heart, and the lovely cadence of a voice of love and friendship that I will most remember.
“Michael Longley will be recognised as one of the greatest poets that Ireland has ever produced, and it has long been my belief that his work is of the level that would be befitting of a Nobel Prize for Literature. The range of his work was immense, be it from the heartbreak of loss to the assurance of the resilience of beauty in nature.
“In his poems, we find a quiet attentiveness to the vagaries of the human heart, its ambitions, its disappointments, its successes and failures, and above all its capacity for empathy. Michael worked to give space and actuality to the moral imperative that we must live together with forbearance, with understanding, with compassion and insight, and above all else, perhaps, with hope.”
SDLP leader Claire Hanna proposed Mr Longley for the Freedom of Belfast in 2015.
She recalled “a wonderful person”.
“We are deeply saddened at the death of our great poet, Michael Longley, who I had the privilege of knowing as a family friend and neighbour. I offer my deepest condolences to his wife of 60 years, Edna, his family and his grandchildren,” she said.
“Michael was a prince of the English language who transcended the narrow categories of ‘Irish’ and ‘British’. He was our greatest living poet. More pertinently, he was a beautiful human being, kind generous, open humorous. He was truly a wonderful person.
“It was a deep honour to nominate him for the Freedom of Belfast in recognition of the massive artistic contribution he made to his native city.
“Wherever in the world his career took him, he always remained a Belfast man at heart and you can see that in much of his work.”
More to follow
Read more
News Catch Up – Thursday 23 January