{"id":7507,"date":"2025-01-23T11:30:49","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T11:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tse.spyrosntanos.com\/?p=7507"},"modified":"2025-06-17T22:00:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T21:00:11","slug":"a-custodian-of-griefs-and-wonders-michael-longley-1939-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/a-custodian-of-griefs-and-wonders-michael-longley-1939-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A custodian of griefs and wonders\u2019 \u2013 Michael Longley, 1939\u20132025"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Michael
Michael Longley with Valerie Eliot, on winning the T. S. Eliot Prize 2000.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The T. S. Eliot Prize is deeply saddened to report the death of Michael Longley on 22 January 2025 at the age of 85.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Michael Longley won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2000 for The Weather in Japan<\/em><\/a>, about which Paul Muldoon, the Chair of judges, said: \u2018These are poems which at first glance may seem small-scale but which always expand our sense of history, be it of ancient Greece, World II Germany or Northern Ireland. Longley is a skilled lyric poet of compassion and grace.\u2019<\/p>\n

Michael Longley was also shortlisted in 1995 for\u00a0The Ghost Orchid<\/i>, in 2004 for Snow Water<\/em> and in 2014 for The Stairwell<\/em>. Robin Robertson, his long-standing editor at Jonathan Cape, said: \u2018It was an honour to work with him on his books from Gorse Fires<\/em> in 1991 until his new selected poems, Ash Keys<\/em>, published last year to mark his eighty-fifth birthday. Not that I had to work very hard, as every poem was close to perfect. I remember remarking in Belfast \u2013 at the launch of Love Poet, Carpenter<\/em> \u2013 a festschrift<\/em> marking his seventieth \u2013 that generally the only editorial input that Michael\u2019s books ever required from me was an ISBN number.\u2019<\/p>\n

Longley chaired the T. S. Eliot Prize judging panel, alongside Deryn Rees-Jones and Fred D\u2019Aguiar, in 2002. He also judged the Prize with Carol Ann Duffy (Chair) and David Morley in 2012.<\/p>\n

Amongst many prizes and awards he won the Whitbread Prize for Gorse Fires<\/em> and the Hawthornden Prize and the Irish Times<\/em> Poetry Prize for The Weather in Japan<\/em>. He was awarded the Queen\u2019s Gold Medal for Poetry and received the Librex Montale Prize, the Wilfred Owen Poetry Award, the Yakamochi Medal, the International Roma Prize and in 2015 the Griffin Poetry Prize, in which year he was also honoured with the Freedom of the City of Belfast. He was Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2007 to 2010, in which year he was made a CBE. In 2022, he was awarded the prestigious Feltrinelli International Poetry Prize for a lifetime\u2019s achievement.<\/p>\n

Sean O\u2019Brien noted how Longley\u2019s poetry evolved from \u2018classically educated formalism towards conversational intimacies \u2026 His work indicates one of the gifts of the major poet, of making the one life speak for all.\u2019 The Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney regarded Michael as \u2018A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders.\u2019 Longley\u2019s own view of the poet\u2019s task was \u2018to find fresh rhythms \u2026 the only way one is going to find new vital rhythms is being vital and alive and alert and responsive oneself. To live life with all of one\u2019s pores open.\u2019<\/p>\n

Michael Longley was married to the critic and academic Edna Longley, who judged the inaugural T. S. Eliot Prize in 1993. Our deepest sympathies to his family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The T. S. Eliot Prize is deeply saddened to report the death of Michael Longley on 22 January 2025 at the age of 85. Michael Longley won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2000 for The Weather in Japan, about which Paul Muldoon, the Chair of judges, said: \u2018These are poems which at first glance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":7746,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7507"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10719,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7507\/revisions\/10719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/prize\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}