The title of Michael Longley’ s New Selected Poems is taken from his poem “ Ash Keys.” The wing-shaped, wind-borne seeds of the ash-tree might be an image for poems in search of their readers. This selection, based on thirteen individual collections, represents Longley’ s unusual range as a lyric poet. It shows how his themes, genres, and forms have evolved and interlaced since the 1960s. Love, violence, the natural world, art, psychodrama, family, the Great War, the Homeric past, and Northern Ireland’ s troubled present cohabit in these pages— as do depth, wit, and beauty. Longley’ s poems of the west of Ireland, which pivot on Carrigskeewaun, his “ soul landscape,” have also made him a pioneer of “ eco-poetry.” In 2022, Longley was awarded the Feltrinelli Prize for poetry, a major international prize. Announcing the award, the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome stressed “ the contemporary relevance of his themes and their cultural implications,” and said: “ Longley is an extraordinary poet of landscape, particularly of the Irish West, which he observes with the delicate and passionate attention of an ecologist, and a tragic singer of Ireland and its dramatic history. But he has also addressed the seduction, conquest, and fascination of love, as well as the shock of war in all ages, the tragedy of the Holocaust and of the gulags, and the themes of loss, grief, and pity.”

Michael Longley was born in Belfast where he still lives. He was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and Trinity College Dublin where he read Classics. He has published eleven collections of poetry including Angel Hill (2017), which won the PEN Pinter Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. Other volumes have earned him the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Irish Times Poetry Now Award, and the Griffin International Prize. He served as Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2007 to 2010. He is married to the critic Edna Longley and has three children. Michael Longley was born in Belfast where he still lives. He was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and Trinity College Dublin where he read Classics. He has published twelve collections of poetry including Angel Hill (2017), which won the PEN Pinter Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. Other volumes have earned him the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Irish Times Poetry Now Award, and the Griffin International Prize. He served as Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2007 to 2010. He is married to the critic Edna Longley and has three children.  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. 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. For his lifetime achievement in poetry, he was awarded the 2022 Feltrinelli Poetry Prize and in 2024 the International Roma Prize. Paul Muldoon was born in County Armagh in 1951. He now lives in New York. A former radio and television producer for the BBC in Belfast, he has taught at Princeton University for thirty-five years. He is the author of fourteen collections. Among his awards are the 1994 T.S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize, the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Poetry, the 2004 American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the 2004 Shakespeare Prize, the 2006 European Prize for Poetry, the 2015 Pigott Poetry Prize, the 2017 Queens Gold Medal for Poetry, and many others.

Foreword by Paul Muldoon from No Continuing City (1969) 1. Epithalamion 3. Persephone 4. A Personal Statement 6. The Osprey 7. No Continuing City 9. Circe 10. Freeze-up 11. The Hebrides 15. Elegy for Fats Waller 16. In Memoriam 18. Leaving Inishmore 19. Journey out of Essex from An Exploded View (1972) 20. Caravan 21. Swans Mating 21. Galapagos 22. Badger 24. Casualty 25. Readings 26. from Letters To Derek Mahon To Seamus Heaney 29. Wounds 30. Carrigskeewaun 31. The West 32. In Memory of Gerard Dillon 33. Skara Brae 34. Alibis 36. Options from Man Lying on a Wall (1976) 38. The Lodger 39. The Bat 40. In Mayo 42. Landscape 43. Weather 44. Halcyon 45. Stilts 45. Master of Ceremonies 46. Edward Thomas’ s War Diary 47. Fleance 48. Company 50. Man Lying on a Wall from The Echo Gate (1979) 51. Wreaths The Civil Servant The Greengrocer The Linen Workers 53. Second Sight 54. Spring Tide 56. Ash Keys 57. Frozen Rain 57. Thaw 58. from Mayo Monologues Brothers Self-heal 60. Peace 62. The War Poets 63. Bog Cotton 64. Sulpicia 65. Grace Darling 66. On Mweelrea 67. The Linen Industry 68. Self-Portrait from Poems (1985) 69. The White Butterfly from Gorse Fires (1991) 70. Sea Shanty 71. Between Hovers 72. Detour 73. Remembering Carrigskeewaun 73. Gorse Fires 74. Homecoming 75. Halley’ s Comet 76. An Amish Rug 76. Tree-house 77. Couchette 78. Laertes 79. Anticleia 80. Ghetto 82. Terezí n T83. he Butchers 84. The Ice-cream Man from The Ghost Orchid (1995) 85. Form 85. Autumn Lady’ s Tresses 86. According to Pythagoras 87. A Flowering 88. The Ghost Orchid 88. The White Garden 89. A Grain of Rice 90. Chinese Objects 91. Baucis & Philemon 95. A Bed of Leaves 95. The Oar 96. The Campfires 97. Ceasefire 98. River & Fountain from The Weather in Japan (2000) 101. The Weather in Japan 102. The Comber 102. All of these People 102. At Poll Salach 103. A Poppy 103. Poetry 104. The War Graves 106. The Evening Star 106. The Horses 107. Ocean 108. A Linen Handkerchief 108. The Design 109. The Altar Cloth 111. The Rabbit 112. Etruria 114. The Waterfall 114. The Beech Tree 115. Remembering the Poets 116. Birds & Flowers from Snow Water (2004) 117. Snow Water 118. Above Dooaghtry 119. Petalwort 120. Ceilidh 121. The Pattern 121. Stonechat 122. Robin 122. Primary Colours 123. Owl Cases 123. Couplet 124. Level Pegging 126. Edward Thomas’ s Poem 126. Harmonica 127. Sleep & Death 128. Heron 129. Helen’ s Monkey 129. Praxilla from A Hundred Doors (2011) 130. The Leveret 131. The Wren 132. Bee Orchid 132. Cloudberries 133. Gardening in Cardoso 134. The Lifeboat 134. Citation 135. Altarpiece 136. Cloud Orchid 137. White Farmhouse from The Stairwell (2014) 138. The Stairwell 138. Amelia’ s Poem 139. Marigolds, 1960 140. Boat 140. The Broighter Boat 141. Lizard Orchid 142. Boy-Soldier 143. from For Peter, My Twin The Trees The Feet The Apparition The Bay The Boxers The Birthday The Duckboards The Twins The Fire from Angel Hill (2017) 148. Pine Martens 148. Solstice 149. Nativity 150. Fifty Years 151. Snowdrops 151. The Sonnets 152. The Poets 152. The Troubles 153. Age from The Candlelight Master (2020) 154. Matisse 154. Orpen 155. Ors 156. Moths & Butterflies 157. Dandelions 157. Primo’ s Question 158. Sedge-Warblers 158. Poem 159. After Amergin 160. To Otomo Yakamochi 161. Grass of Parnassus 162. War 163. Empty Chariots 163. Moly 164. Wild Orchids 165. Sonnet for Michael Viney 166. The Walk 167. Brother 167. December from The Slain Birds (2022) 168. Tawny Owl 168. Eyelid 169. Amelia’ s Model 170. Quatrains 171. Ravine 171. Lullaby 172. Solomon’ s-Seal 173. Sneezewort 173. Cassandra 174. Telemachos 175. Takabuti 175. Origami 176. Amateur 176. Wreck 177. Totem