Michael Longley
Verified- Radio Presenter, Dean Radio
- Producer and Radio Presenter, Community Radio United Kingdom
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Articles by Michael Longley
Michael Longley
IOur stars on either side – herb robert, tormentil –The reeds we walk between are lovers whispering. IIThey shelter with us behind the drystone wall,The men who laid these grass-smothered boulders. IIIIn the far field a jackass and his jennetSafeguard the mare and her dozing foal. IVButterfly-orchid ghosts, sand-martin ghostsWhere the Owenadornaun used to flow. VI pick a buttercup for... IOur stars on either side – herb robert, tormentil –The reeds we walk between are lovers whispering.
Ash Keys: New Selected Poems
Published to coincide with his 85th birthday, Ash Keys looks back on the extraordinary career of the last surviving member of the triumvirate of poets that rose out of 1960s Belfast 'A master in an old, great tradition' THE TIMES 'A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders' SEAMUS HEANEY, author of The title of Michael Longley’s 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.
Michael Longley · Poem: ‘Boreen’
I Our stars on either side – herb robert, tormentil – The reeds we walk between are lovers whispering. II They shelter with us behind the drystone wall, The men who laid these grass-smothered boulders. III In the far field a jackass and his jennet Safeguard the mare and her dozing foal. IV Butterfly-orchid ghosts, sand-martin ghosts Where the Owenadornaun used to flow. V I pick a buttercup for Issa’s Japanese ‘Dewdrop world’ to find a place in Ireland.
Ao xeito de Amergin
IdiomacatalàDeutschEnglishespañoleuskarafrançaisgalegoitalianoportuguêsromână
Michael Longley · Three Poems · LRB 22 September 2022
Solomon’s Seal Shaded by the self-seeded hazels In a back corner of our garden, To the right of the flowering currant An unexpected Solomon’s seal I want to show you. Does it matter Why such graceful bells are so called (Seals of a medieval document?) It’s May, and Solomon says: Rise up, My love, my fair one, and come away, Winter is past, the rain is over And gone, flowers appear on the earth. A solitary cowslip has survived Under our beech the first grass-cutting.
“Amelia’s Model,” by Michael Longley
I. In her model of the solar system My seven-year-old cosmologist Ties to a barbecue skewer With fuse wire the planets, buttons: For Venus an ivory button, Mercury silver beside the sun, Mother-of-pearl for Jupiter, Red and green for Mars and Earth, For Saturn’s rings a pipe cleaner, So that in the outer darkness Close to the kitchen her brown eyes Represent Uranus, Neptune. II.
Poem Of The Week: 'Italy Vs. England' By George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
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Italy vs. England With all its sinful doings, I must say, That Italy’s a pleasant place to me, Who love to see the sun shine every day, And vines (not nailed to walls) from tree to tree Festooned, much like the back scene of a play, Or melodrame, which people flock to see, When the first act is ended by a dance In vineyards copied from the South of France.
By George Gordon, Rachel A. Bower, Michael McCarthy Verified, Michael Mccarthy, Michael Longley Verified
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The Yorkshire Times
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Flags and Flowers: These Mothers of Gods by Rachel Bower
arts The epigraph to one of Rachel Bower’s poems in her latest collection is taken from a Walter Benjamin axiom on the indivisibility of civilization and barbarism. His words could be no more pertinent respecting Bower’s own work, for every tincture of glitter that illuminates her sense of teeming abundance is offset by the presence, or implication, of its deleterious or necrotic opposite.
Custody Of The Eyes: Like A Tree Cut Back By Michael McCarthy
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arts It is a rare thing to find an Irish catholic priest turning his hand to the writing of a memoir; more difficult still to imagine the demands of a vocation not getting the better of artistic impulse. But, in Like a Tree Cut Back, Michael McCarthy leaves us the fine autobiographical legacy of a life lived according to the principles of his faith, whilst giving free vent to an unusually sensitive imagination and an ethical schema informed as much by fellow feeling as by empathy.
By Michael McCarthy Verified, Michael Mccarthy, George Gordon, Rachel A. Bower, Michael Longley Verified
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The Yorkshire Times
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Poem Of The Week: 'Utah' By Anne Stevenson (1933-2020)
arts Utah Somewhere nowhere in Utah, a boy by the roadside, gun in his hand, and the rare dumb hard tears flowing. Beside him, the greyheaded man has let one arm slide awkwardly over his shoulder, is talking and pointing at whatever it is, dead, in the dust on the ground. By the old parked Chevy, two women, talking and watching. Their skirts flag forward. Bandannas twist with their hair. Around them some sheep and a fence and the sagebrush burning and burning with its blue flame.
Enormous Radio: An Echo in Her Skin by JARR
arts The expression ‘Ambient’, as it describes a specific genre of modern music, is hopelessly inadequate to the task of definition, for it is not possible to set linguistic limits on a form that encompasses all others. The beauty of Ambient lies in the filtering of many strands of light through one spectrum – constellations of colour and tincture commuting suggestion into aural recognition by means of contemplation.
Poem Of The Week: 'Grace Darling' By Michael Longley
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arts Grace Darling After you had steered your coble out of the storm And left the smaller islands to break the surface, Like draughts shaking that colossal backcloth there came Fifty pounds from the Queen, proposals of marriage.
By Michael Longley Verified, George Gordon, Rachel A. Bower, Michael McCarthy Verified, Michael Mccarthy
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The Yorkshire Times
Verified
The Vitality of Ordinary Things
Krista Tippett, host: To dwell on beauty and normalcy, to reassert the liveliness of ordinary things, precisely in the face of what is hardest and most broken in society — this has been Michael Longley’s gift to Northern Ireland as one of its foremost living poets. I had the pleasure of conversing with him before an adoring audience at the MAC Theatre in Belfast, in 2016.
How remote sensing prepared poultry producers for the pandemic
Remote sensing is becoming popular in broiler and egg production. How has adopting this technology helped poultry producers to overcome challenges posed by COVID-19? One challenge of the COVID-19 lockdown has been the restrictions on movements of people. This has meant companies operating multiple farms have had to reduce the movements of certain staff between farms such as area farms management and technical support.
Poem Of The Week: 'The Lion And Albert' By Marriott Edgar
arts The Lion and Albert There's a famous seaside place called Blackpool, That's noted for fresh air and fun, And Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom Went there with young Albert, their son. A grand little lad was young Albert, All dressed in his best; quite a swell With a stick with an 'orse's 'ead 'andle, The finest that Woolworth's could sell. They didn't think much to the Ocean: The waves, they was fiddlin' and small, There was no wrecks and nobody drownded, Fact, nothing to laugh at at all.
How to provide technical support to the poultry industry during a lockdown
What kind of technical support do poultry operations typically require in a non-pandemic scenario? Normally poultry producers would be looking for support to improve production or resolve production issues. The way this would normally be done is through in-house technical visits to see the birds and facilities on the ground. Reviewing performance data (which can be done remotely), environment, feed and equipment. Training may also be a part of this.
Poem Of The Week: 'Reading Primo Levi By The Family Fireside At Evening' By Paul Durcan
arts Reading Primo Levi by the Family Fireside at Evening I turn the pages, wisdom Dissolving into despair. When woman and child speak to me I do not hear them. What am I to do? Continue the book, Pursue the truth, Make sad the family? Or close the book And into the hole in my head Let lamplight filter? Little Mark wants to know If I will play Labyrinth. Holding the book open in my hand, I tell him that I can’t Play Labyrinth. ‘Why can’t you?’ he enquires.
Poetry for Tumultuous Times
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. Parker Palmer offers a light-hearted vignette on the unexpected visitor and welcoming her in — all by way of a metaphor by Rumi. Tracy K. Smith has a deep interest in “the kind of silence that yields clarity” and “the way our voices sound when we dip below the decibel level of politics.” She’s a welcome voice on the little leaps of the imagination that can restore us.
The Leveret - Poetry Archive
for my grandson, Benjamin This is your first night in Carrigskeewaun The Owennadornaun is so full of rain You arrived in Paddy Morrison’s tractor, A bumpy approach in your father’s arms To the cottage where, all of one year ago, You were conceived, a fire-seed in the hearth. Did you hear the wind in the fluffy chimney? Do you hear the wind tonight, and the rain And a shore bird calling from the mussel reefs? Tomorrow I’ll introduce you to the sea, Little hoplite. Have you been missing it?
Ceasefire - Poetry Archive
I Put in mind of his own father and moved to tears Achilles took him by the hand and pushed the old king Gently away, but Priam curled up at his feet and Wept with him until their sadness filled the building. II Taking Hector’s corpse into his own hands Achilles Made sure it was washed and, for the old king’s sake, Laid out in uniform, ready for Priam to carry Wrapped like a present home to Troy at daybreak.
The Ice-Cream Man
Rum and raisin, vanilla, butter-scotch, walnut, peach: You would rhyme off the flavours. That was before They murdered the ice-cream man on the Lisburn road And you bought carnations to lay outside his shop.
“History”
From The Next Ancient World Even Eve, the only soul in all of time to never have to wait for love, must have leaned some sleepless nights alone against the garden wall and wailed, cold, stupefied, and wild and wished to trade-in all of Eden to have but been a child. In fact, I gather that is why she leapt and fell from grace, that she might have a story of herself to tell in some other place.
The Vitality of Ordinary Things
Krista Tippett, host: To dwell on beauty and normalcy — to reassert the liveliness of ordinary things, precisely in the face of what is hardest and most broken in society. This has been Michael Longley’s gift to Northern Ireland as one of its foremost living poets. I had the pleasure of conversing with him before an adoring audience at the MAC theater in Belfast in 2016.
The Poem: Starlings by Michael Longley
Sitting up against a sea wall, Eating fish and chips, we count The starlings, a dozen or so Swaggering opportunists Unexpected on the...
The Linen Industry
Pulling up flax after the blue flowers have fallen And laying our handfuls in the peaty water To rot those grasses to the bone, or building stooks That recall the skirts of an invisible dancer, We become a part of the linen industry And follow its processes to the grubby town Where fields are compacted into window-boxes And there is little room among the big machines.
Literary Festival 2014: Voices of the Great War
Recorded on 1 March 2014 at Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building One hundred years after the outbreak of the Great War, Sebastian Faulks, whose novel Birdsong has sold over 2.5 million copies, introduces four writers, and the pieces of First World War literature that mean most to them. The poet and fiction writer Tobias Hill, described by A.S. Byatt as one of the ‘most original and interesting’ novelists writing in Britain today, looks at Alain Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes.
Saint Francis To The Birds Poem by Michael Longley - Poem Hunter
And, summing up, I think of when With cloud and cloudburst you confer, By God's sheer genius lifted there, Lighthearted starling, nervous wren. It is perfection you rehearse - God placed the limpet on a rock, He dressed the primrose in its frock upside down with its leg showing And closed the chestnut in its purse: Creating one more precedent, With no less forethought, no less care He gave you feathers and the air To migrate to his best intent.
Michael Longley · Poem: ‘Room to Rhyme’
in memory of Seamus Heaney I I blew a kiss across the stage to you When we read our poems in Lisdoonvarna Two weeks before you died. Arrayed in straw The Armagh Rhymers turned up at the end. II In the middle of a field in Mourne country Standing side by side, looking straight ahead We peed against a fragment of stone wall, St Patrick’s windbreak, the rain’s urinal.
“Snowdrops” - The New Yorker
Inauspicious between headstones On Angel Hill, wintry love Tokens for Murdo, Alistair, Duncan, home from the trenches, Back in Balmacara and Kyle, Cameronians, Gordon Highlanders Clambering on hands and knees Up the steep path to this graveyard The snowdrops whiten, green- Hemmed frost-piercers, buttonhole Or posy, Candlemas bells For soldiers who come here on leave And rest against rusty railings Like out-of-breath pallbearers.
Contemporary Irish Poets
Clearances 3 & 5 By Seamus Heaney From Seamus Heaney – New Selected Poems 1966-1987 Published by Faber and Faber Dipper By Michael Longley From Snow Water Published by Cape Poetry The Wren By Michael Longley From Michael Longley - Collected Poems Published by Cape Poetry Swineheard By Eilean ni Chuilleanain From Contemporary Irish Poetry – An Anthology Published by University of California Press A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford By Derek Mahon From Derek Mahon – Selected Poems Published by...
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