Michael
and Edna Longley's Visit to Our Contemporary Literature Class
(Poet Michael Longley was born in
Belfast in 1939 and educated at the
Royal Belfast Academical Institution. After reading classics at Trinity
College, Dublin, he taught in schools in Belfast, Dublin and London. He
joined the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in 1970, working in
literature and the traditional arts as Combined Arts Director before
taking early retirement from the post in 1991. He was awarded the
Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2001. Edna
Longley is professor of English at Queen's University, Belfast.
Her publications include two editions of Edward Thomas's poetry and
prose, and four critical books, Louis MacNeice: A Study
(1988) from
Faber, and Poetry
in the Wars (1986), The Living Stream: Literature and
Revisionism in Ireland (1994) and Poetry & Posterity
(2000) from
Bloodaxe.
Required Reading for Wednesday, November 5
Background and context for Michael Longley's poetry:
1. "The Cultural Process" -- Edna Longley
Based on a talk given to the Annual Conference of the Irish Association,
Carrickfergus, 12-14 November 1999
2. Poems by
------------------------------------------------------
3. Michael Longley's poetry from his Selected Poems:
"Letter to Derek Mahon" (32)
"Letter to Seamus Heaney" (34)
"Wounds" (36)
"Bog Cotton" (69)
"The Ice-Cream Man" (102)
"Poppies" (117)
"Ceasefire" (118)
Not-Required but for further reading
*Freeze-up (12)--nature
*In Memoriam (18)--about father in WWI--was English; got in wrong line
and joined Scottish company--took bad wound (private parts--Michael and
twin bro lucky to be here).
*Casualty (30)--nature--anything else?
*The West (38)--West of Ireland--Longley apparently has cottage there, a
retreat in nature.
*Landscape (49)--nature
*Wreaths (60)--the Troubles
*Frozen Rain (66)--nature (spoken by the rain)
*Thaw (66)--nature
*Peace (71)
*The Linen Industry (77)--love and industry in N Ireland
*Hallowe"en (81)--violence (political?)
*Sea-Shanty (86)--conflates Ireland (esp Longley"s retreat) with
Classical Greece--penultimate line a quote from Sappho
*Detour (88)--lovely evocation of "small market town"
*Remembering Carrikskeewaun (90)--site of Longley"s getaway cottage (I
think)
*Homecoming (90)--Odyssey
*Laertes (94)--Odyssey
*Anticlea (95)--Odyssey
*Terezin (96)--Holocaust
*Ghetto (97)--Holocaust
*The Butchers (101)--Odyssey--poem (according to Edna Longley) linking
"Odysseus"s slaughter of Penelope"s suitors with the notorious Shankill
Butchers." Edna comments on Michael"s "sense of how syntax operates in
Classical poetry" and points out that ""The Butchers" consists of a
single sentence: "a formal substitute for the rhyme-schemes and stanzaic
shapes which I used in my earlier work.""
*According to Pythagorous (107)--after Ovid
*Spiderwoman (108)--after Ovid
*The Scissors Ceremony (113)--love in age
*The Fishing Party (120)--the Troubles
*The White Garden (123)--poetry
*The Ghost Orchid (123)--poetry?
*Chinese Occasions (124)--nature
Critical/Biographical Sites related to Michael Longley
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,477414,00.html
http://www.geocities.com/abbeypress/longleyonline.html
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth199&state=index%3Dl
http://www.wfu.edu/wfupress/selectedlongley.htm
http://www.rte.ie/radio/readingthefuture/longley.html
http://www.wfu.edu/wfupress/irish.htm
http://styluspub.com/books/book5171.html
http://www.irish-association.ie/longley.htm
http://omega.cc.umb.edu/~irish/longley.htm
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tw/10-05-95/collage.htm
http://www.geocities.com/abbeypress/longleyonline.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/poetry/the-poets.shtml
http://chaucer.library.emory.edu/irishpoet/overview/#1