1999   132 pages
clothbound

This is Michael Longley’s own selection from thirty years of writing. It reveals the strength and coherence of an extraordinary body of work, which has been celebrated– in Britain and Ireland but also in the U.S. – for its lyric intensity, metaphysical wit, and thematic and formal range. Poet and critic Sean O’Brien writes, “His work indicates one of the gifts of the major poet, of making the one life speak for all, and its corollary, of seeming to be able to speak to anyone.”

1999   132 pages
paperback

“Longley has all the necessary gifts – precision, the celebrant’s tongue, and that touch of mystery that sets certain poets apart.” George Mackey Brown

“His measured rhythms, skilfully crafted metaphors and elaborate syntax always insist on poetry’s origins in ceremony, its powers to commemorate and dignify.” Mark Ford

1996   62 pages
paperback

"It is a volume in which the preoccupations of a poetic lifetime are richly deepened, intensified and supplemented in poems of lucid, ceremonious courtesy and goodwill: a 'flowering' itself, in more than one sense." Neil Corcoran, Times Literary Supplement

"Longley's wittiest book to date.… The Ghost Orchid is as distinguished and memorable a collection as any published in our times." David Wheatley, Irish Review

1987   206 pages
paperback
First edition

"An intrepid Irish poet.... To read these forty-three undated poems is to admire the virtual absence of solecism.  To realize that they were conceived and shaped over a period of seventeen years is to appreciate the struggle which must have accompanied and determined the lyric force and the fearless compassion that together define Longley's poetic profile." Vernon Young, Parnassus

1981   64 pages 
paperback
First edition

"Selected Poems is much like the ghost orchid: multi-hued, beautiful, delicate.  Unlike the evanescent orchid, however, Longley's poetry has a long-term staying power which has already assured him a place in a poetic tradition which transcends the boundaries of the six counties of Northern Ireland.  This is a major publication from one of the world's leading lyric poets, and we are blessed to have it." Richard Rankin Russell, The Carolina Quarterly

1998   57 pages
clothbound

"… one of the most impressive poetic sequences to emerge from Ireland in recent years …. An extraordinary performance." Robert Taylor, The Boston Globe

1998   57 pages
paperback

"There is a quality of intellect in this recent work — its varied influences, verbal play and thematic design — that beggars the work of many other writers. The Yellow Book is Mahon's Autumn Journal, much like MacNeice in its congenial (sometimes jaundiced or wistful) meditations." The Hudson Review

1996  64 pages
clothbound

"… something fresh and virtually unprecedented in modern Irish poetry: a work of art that is at once a love letter and a dream of reconciliation, a diary of a trauma and a vision of restoration." Ben Howard, Sewanee Review

"From the first page of Derek Mahon's new collection of poems we know that we are back in the hands of a master." Peggy O'Brien, Irish Times

1996   64 pages
paperback

"… something fresh and virtually unprecedented in modern Irish poetry: a work of art that is at once a love letter and a dream of reconciliation, a diary of a trauma and a vision of restoration." Ben Howard, Sewanee Review

"From the first page of Derek Mahon's new collection of poems we know that we are back in the hands of a master." Peggy O'Brien, The Irish Times

1995   54 pages
paperback 
Revised edition

"Despair so lovely certainly brightens the dark, for all of us." Adrian Frazier, Eire Ireland