Michael Longley at 70

Joining several other distinguished Irish authors with 'significant' birthdays this year, Michael Longley is 70 today (he's on next year's Leaving Certificate course again, including poems such as 'Wounds', 'Wreaths', 'An Amish Rug' and 'Ceasefire').

Gerard Dawe pays tribute to Longley in today's Irish Times, 'Poet of Radiant Revelation' :-

Now celebrating his 70th birthday, Michael Longley’s poems have become to a new generation of readers 'ubiquitous' in the best sense of the word and in the most positive light they cast upon our life and times. For Longley is a bringer of light and his Collected Poems , published by Jonathan Cape in 2006, amounts to one of the most impressive achievements in contemporary poetry in English. Reading the volume from cover to cover is like reading a great classical novel of the European tradition, with a powerful dramatic (and self-dramatising) voice guiding the reader through a fully rendered, physically alive, thriving and glorious work of the senses.

Full article here. And Michael Viney writes here about Longley's connection with Carrigskeewaun in Mayo.