We've lost an Irish literary giant with the passing of Belfast poet Michael Longley, who has died aged 85. Below, we offer a selection of the many memorable interviews the great man gave to RTÉ over the years, his passion for the medium tangible, his singular voice ringing loud and clear.
As President Michael D. Higgins said in his tribute to Longley, 'The range of his work was immense, be it from the heartbreak of loss to the assurance of the resilience of beauty in nature. In his poems, we find a quiet attentiveness to the vagaries of the human heart, its ambitions, its disappointments, its successes and failures, and above all its capacity for empathy. Michael worked to give space and actuality to the moral imperative that we must live together with forbearance, with understanding, with compassion and insight, and above all else, perhaps, with hope.'
In 2024, Michael Longley celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday in conversation with RTÉ Arena, discussing his life in poetry and his collection, Ash Keys.
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Back in 2022, Michael Longley won the prestigious Italian Feltrinelli International Prize for Poetry; he celebrated the occasion in the company of RTÉ Radio 1's Poetry Programme.
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Also in 2022, he discussed his life-long fashionation with avian life with RTÉ Arena, upon the occasion of his acclaimed late-career volume The Slain Birds.
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Prolific as ever as he entered his ninth decade, Michael Longley talked to Kay Sheehy in 2020 about his stunning collection, The Candlelight Master.
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Two years earlier, in 2018, The Poetry Programme paid tribute to Longley with an extended two-part interview - listen to the first part below.
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The second part of the Poetry Programme interview offers an illuminating take on the poet's life and work, in conversation with Olivia O'Leary.
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Finally, we go back to 2017, as Michael Longley and his wife, the renowned critic Edna Longley, joined Miriam O'Callaghan in studio for a memorable chat about their formidable partnership.
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We'll leave you with Michael Longley reading his masterpiece Ceasefire in the UCD Special Collections Reading Room, for the Irish Poetry Reading Archive. Suaimhneas síoraí.
