Michael Longley Summary

Michael Longley is one of a number of Northern Irish poets who established a reputation in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Though his poetry is less well known than that of his contemporary Seamus Hea... Read more

Critical Essay by Alan Brownjohn No Continuing City shows the stubborn, interesting persistence of formal and intricate patterning in verse. Michael Longley, on this showing, is a deeply fastidious c... Read more

Critical Essay by Vernon Young Longley's development, in the four volumes from which [Selected Poems: 1963–1980] was culled, has been fairly unhesitating, or perhaps the major hesitatio... Read more

Critical Essay by The Times Literary Supplement Michael Longley's new collection of poems [An Exploded View] includes pieces dedicated to Seamus Heaney and James Simmons; and although it seems... Read more

Critical Essay by Terence Brown The early poems of Michael Longley … are the work of a self-conscious, urban sophisticate for whom Ireland as a possible poetic subject scarcely exists. Indeed ... Read more

Critical Essay by Douglas Sealy Michael Longley's Man Lying on a Wall might almost be a photograph album of a family holiday in the country: the poet is seen swimming, plucking a goose, carryi... Read more

Critical Essay by John Mole Michael Longley is a patient, properly ambitious poet who has worked hard to achieve a distinctive style without appearing to question his deep trust in the resources of f... Read more