I work hard to make the poems as good as they can be, and if they're not good enough I scrap them. I find it difficult after a gap of a few years to tinker - I'm more likely to… — Michael Longley Copy Share Image
I don't know where the shape of a poem comes from. I certainly don't impose it. I write out of a jumble of emotions and vague notions and scraps of knowledge. At some stage a form or, rather, a shape… — Michael Longley Copy Share Image
The gap between verse and poetry is enormous. Between good poetry and good prose the gap is much narrower — Michael Longley Copy Share Image
I would insist that poetry is a normal human activity and its proper concern all the things that happen to people. — Michael Longley Copy Share Image
Most poets' revisions are disastrous. They buckle and dent what was originally forged at a red-hot heat. — Michael Longley Copy Share Image
In America, where you'd have thought the country's so huge it couldn't happen quite so cosily, everyone's giving his imprimatur to everyone else. You… — Michael Longley Copy Share Image
Every Monday morning I try to remember to say "Thank you, Lord. I'm not at the Senior Staff Meeting." — Michael Longley Copy Share Image
I work hard to make the poems as good as they can be, and if they're not good enough I scrap them. I find… — Michael Longley Copy Share Image
The job has left me with a healthy disregard for what you might call Public Life. I have no desire now to go to… — Michael Longley Copy Share Image
Of course, when a poem is being born, the reasoning part of the brain throbs away at full throttle, but all the other areas… — Michael Longley Copy Share Image
I suppose that as you grow older some sense of an accumulating oeuvre is unavoidable. — Michael Longley Copy Share Image
For me the form, the stanzaic shape, is an endorsement, proof that I'm engaged with the Latin or Greek at an original level, that… — Michael Longley Copy Share Image
Weddings and funerals have so much in common (except that in Ireland funerals are more fun - better food, better drink): at both, our… — Michael Longley Copy Share Image
I'm not the kind of poet who arranges treasure-hunts to please the academics and keep them busy. Poetry should be surprising in deeper ways. — Michael Longley Copy Share Image
I don't know where the shape of a poem comes from. I certainly don't impose it. I write out of a jumble of emotions… — Michael Longley Copy Share Image
A good poem is not completely a poem until it has received a critical response that grows out of the poem in an almost… — Michael Longley Copy Share Image
