23 January: The Arts Council expresses great sadness at the passing of the distinguished Irish poet and Aosdána member Michael Longley, who has died aged 85. 

Born in Belfast in 1939, Michael Longley was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and Trinity College Dublin. He worked as a teacher and served as director of literature and traditional arts for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland from 1970 to 1991. 

He published thirteen poetry collections and won numerous awards, including the 2017 PEN Pinter Prize. He was appointed a CBE in 2010, and from 2007 to 2010 he was Ireland Professor of Poetry. 

Chair of the Arts Council Maura McGrath said: 

“The Arts Council is deeply saddened to learn of Michael Longley’s death. Through a vital career that spanned decades, Longley leaves a rich legacy of poetry and praise. Dedicated to his writing and to the poetic form, he inspired generations of readers and young poets through his work, his criticism and his teaching. As warm as he was wise, Michael Longley was a literary giant, and his poems will continue to be treasured by readers in Ireland and around the world. We will miss him.” 

Longley’s books of poetry include No Continuing City (1969), An Exploded View (1973), Man Lying on a Wall (1976), The Echo Gate (1979), The Ghost Orchid (1995), which was short-listed for the T.S. Eliot Award. Gorse Fires won the Whitbread Poetry Prize in 1991, and The Weather in Japan won the Irish Times Literature Prize for Poetry, the Hawthornden Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2001. 

He published an autobiographical work, Tuppeny Stung, in 1994, and edited selections of poems by Louis MacNeice and W. R. Rodgers. He also wrote about jazz, painting and natural history. 

Other awards include the Irish-American Cultural Institute Award and the Eric Gregory Award, which he shared with Derek Mahon in 1965. In 2001, he was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature,