The Night Before Spring
Will be published approx. on 4. March 2027
80 pages
E-Book
978-1-5299-8180-3 (ISBN)
Description
A beautiful and elegiac final collection filled with people, places, departed friends, and the pleasures of nature
With an introduction by Edna Longley
'One of the world's greats' IRISH NEWS
'A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders' SEAMUS HEANEY
Michael Longley was a lyric poet of breathtaking depth and range, remarkable versatility and coherence. His preoccupations were love and loss, the natural world, art, history and the effects of violent conflict - from Homer through to the Great War, the Holocaust and the tragedy of Northern Ireland.
What marks Longley out for greatness is the humanity of his work, through more than a dozen collections; the way he captured the essence of our time alive: those brief instances of vision, intimate and luminous. He was a love poet, a nature poet, an elegist, but - above all - a celebrant of life.
The poems in this, his last book, pull in and out of focus - from the close examination of a flower's petals, of jellyfish 'like melting paperweights', to ancient beech trees and megalithic circles; from 'a coracle, half an acorn' to a chance meeting in a Belfast bar with the press photographer who had shown the world 'our blood-drenched tarmacadam'. If Longley had been asked how he could stare so deeply into things and find the truth - telling it beautifully - he might have shrugged and said, like that cameraman, 'I take out my light-meter / And I focus the lens.'
'His work is of the level that would be befitting of a Novel Prize for Literature' MICHAEL D HIGGINS
'Michael Longley's latest lines are just as restless and as promising as his first' Times Literary Supplement
With an introduction by Edna Longley
'One of the world's greats' IRISH NEWS
'A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders' SEAMUS HEANEY
Michael Longley was a lyric poet of breathtaking depth and range, remarkable versatility and coherence. His preoccupations were love and loss, the natural world, art, history and the effects of violent conflict - from Homer through to the Great War, the Holocaust and the tragedy of Northern Ireland.
What marks Longley out for greatness is the humanity of his work, through more than a dozen collections; the way he captured the essence of our time alive: those brief instances of vision, intimate and luminous. He was a love poet, a nature poet, an elegist, but - above all - a celebrant of life.
The poems in this, his last book, pull in and out of focus - from the close examination of a flower's petals, of jellyfish 'like melting paperweights', to ancient beech trees and megalithic circles; from 'a coracle, half an acorn' to a chance meeting in a Belfast bar with the press photographer who had shown the world 'our blood-drenched tarmacadam'. If Longley had been asked how he could stare so deeply into things and find the truth - telling it beautifully - he might have shrugged and said, like that cameraman, 'I take out my light-meter / And I focus the lens.'
'His work is of the level that would be befitting of a Novel Prize for Literature' MICHAEL D HIGGINS
'Michael Longley's latest lines are just as restless and as promising as his first' Times Literary Supplement
More details
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Edition type
New edition
ISBN-13
978-1-5299-8180-3 (9781529981803)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Persons
Michael Longley (Author)
Michael Longley's thirteen collections have received many awards, among them the Whitbread Prize, the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Irish Times Poetry Prize and the Griffin International Prize. His Collected Poems was published in 2006, and Sidelines: Selected Prose in 2017. In 2001 he received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, and in 2003 the Wilfred Owen Award. He was appointed CBE in 2010, and from 2007 to 2010 was Ireland Professor of Poetry. In 2017 he received the PEN Pinter Prize, and in 2018 the inaugural Yakamochi Medal.
In 2015 he was made a Freeman of the City of Belfast, where he lived and worked with his wife, the critic Edna Longley, until his death in 2025. For his lifetime achievement in poetry he was awarded the 2022 Feltrinelli Poetry Prize, and in 2024 the International Roma Prize.
Michael Longley's thirteen collections have received many awards, among them the Whitbread Prize, the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Irish Times Poetry Prize and the Griffin International Prize. His Collected Poems was published in 2006, and Sidelines: Selected Prose in 2017. In 2001 he received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, and in 2003 the Wilfred Owen Award. He was appointed CBE in 2010, and from 2007 to 2010 was Ireland Professor of Poetry. In 2017 he received the PEN Pinter Prize, and in 2018 the inaugural Yakamochi Medal.
In 2015 he was made a Freeman of the City of Belfast, where he lived and worked with his wife, the critic Edna Longley, until his death in 2025. For his lifetime achievement in poetry he was awarded the 2022 Feltrinelli Poetry Prize, and in 2024 the International Roma Prize.
