ACCLAIMED IRISH POET Michael Longley died on Wednesday night in Belfast at the age of 85, following a short battle with illness.

The poet was born in Belfast city in 1939 to English parents, but identified as Irish throuhout his life.

Longley received numerous awards for 13 poetry collections over the course of his career, including the Whitbread Prize, the TS Eliot Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Irish Times Poetry Prize and the Griffin International Prize.

The Belfast poet went to school at Royal Belfast Academical Institution and later attended Trinity College Dublin in the 1950s, where he developed an interest in poetry and also met his wife Edna.

The talented writer rose to prominence as a young poet that emerged from Northern Ireland in the 1960s.

Michael Longley pictured sharing a scarf with Seamus Heaney at a poetry reading on the Hill of Tara in 2010. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

He was the Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2007 to 2010, a cross-border academic post set up in 1998, previously held by other highly-regarded Irish poets such as John Montague, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, and Paul Durcan.

Many will recognise Longley’s work from the Leaving Certificate English curriculum, where his poetry previously featured among a range of Irish and international poets.

 ’A literary giant’

President Michael D. Higgins has led tributes to the “peerless poet”, expressing “deep sadness” at the news.

“Michael Longley will be recognised as one of the greatest poets that Ireland has ever produced, and it has long been my belief that his work is of the level that would be befitting of a Nobel Prize for Literature,” Higgins said.

“The range of his work was immense, be it from the heartbreak of loss to the assurance of the resilience of beauty in nature. 

“It is, however, the generosity of his heart, and the lovely cadence of a voice of love and friendship that I will most remember,” Higgins added.

The Arts Council also paid tribute to Longley, with Arts Council Chair Maura McGrath describing how he “left 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,” McGrath said.

“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.”