Longley At Large

Michael Longley is often good value for a laugh but at the launch of his new collection, A Hundred Doors, the tone is downbeat, almost valedictory. The Great Hall at Queens lends the occasion some extra ceremony while the man reads those lovely poems to his grandchildren, the best gift that a soul might ask for. Of these, 'The Sixth Swan' is a precious note to Maisie, the latecomer. The words seem purely of the moment but are also loaded with an appreciation of time and its hasty parade.

Longley then returns to the Great War and his family connections to the event. 'Bumf' concerns the awful details of sanitation in the trenches and elsewhere we hear 'Citation', a military document that has the grandeur of Latin metre. The poet uses that mesmeric voice of his to mark the import of it all.

The new collection is dedicated to Frank Ormsby, poet, editor and sometime English teacher of mine. He sits at the back of the hall with Ciaran Carson and some other heavyweights. I have intense memories of his classes, when he ditched the curriculum and read us stuff that thrilled his heart. It has never left me, although when I met him again a few years ago, Frank could not remember myself as a pupil...

Oh well. His fortnightly pints with Longley in the Crown bar are now part of the dedication. A lyrical hint of afternoons in the umbrage of a wooden snug, lit by stained glass, a rare kind of confession.