‘Deep sadness’ following death of Belfast poet Michael Longley

By Rebecca Black, PA

Deep sadness has been expressed following the death of Belfast poet Michael Longley.

Mr Longley died at the age of 85 in hospital on Wednesday.

He won a number of awards for his writing throughout his life including the TS Eliot Prize, the Feltrinelli International Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Prize, and he was appointed a CBE in 2010 as well as being awarded the freedom of Belfast.

Among some of his best-known work is the poem Ceasefire in 1994, inspired by the then-ceasefires in his native Northern Ireland.

President Michael D Higgins led the tributes to Mr Longley, and said he learned of his death with “the deepest sadness”.

“I regarded him as a peerless poet with at least three poetic lives. It is, however, the generosity of his heart, and the lovely cadence of a voice of love and friendship that I will most remember,” he said.

“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.

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

Mr Higgins said: “May I send my deepest condolences to Michael’s wife, the scholar and writer Edna Longley, to his children and to all of his family, friends and many admirers across the world.”