Michael Longley

Michael Longley’s status as one of the great Northern Ireland poets of the last century is undisputed.

This year we are delighted to welcome Michael to Belfast International Arts Festival for a special event to mark his 85th birthday in 2024, and the publication of his new selected poems collection, Ash Keys.

Ash Keys looks back at the extraordinary career of the last surviving member of the triumvirate of poets that rose out of 1960s Belfast. Love, violence, the natural world, psychodrama, family, the Great War, the Homeric past and Northern Ireland’s troubled present cohabit in thiscollection – as do depth, wit and beauty.

Michael Longley will be in conversation with poet and novelist Nick Laird.