Michael Longley

Belfast poet, classicist, and Director of Combined Arts at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland from 1970 until his retirement in 1991. His work fuses Homer with the Mayo townland of Carrigskeewaun and the Troubles; Ceasefire — a sonnet on Priam and Achilles published days before the 1994 IRA ceasefire — is his most famous poem. Ireland Professor of Poetry 2007–2010. Last collection The Slain Birds (2022). Died aged 85 of complications from hip surgery; he was the last survivor of the Belfast triumvirate with Heaney and Mahon. Funeral at All Souls Church, Belfast, 1 February 2025; President Higgins called him "a peerless poet."