Quotes by Michael Longley

Michael Longley

A good poem is not completely a poem until it has received a critical response that grows out of the poem in an almost biological way.

Grows

Response

Way

Every Monday morning I try to remember to say “Thank you, Lord. I’m not at the Senior Staff Meeting.”

Monday

Morning

Senior

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 my versions are explorations.

Greek

Latin

Levels

I do feel that a poem needs not just space, but, ideally, space around that space – space for meditation, reverie, subliminal link-ups. I sense that poetry happens at a level above or below intelligence. It doesn’t come into being at a purely rational level.

Meditation

Needs

Space

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 mysteriously emerges.

Emotion

Shapes

Writing

I hardly ever look at my published books.

Book

Looks

I suppose that as you grow older some sense of an accumulating oeuvre is unavoidable.

Grows

I think a philistine environment should be bracing for young artists. You have to make your own enjoyment, you’ve got to make your own art.

Art

Environment

Thinking

I was the first Arts Council official in the archipelago to do something for what you might call indigenous music.

Art

Firsts

Might

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 destroy.

Hard Work

Not Good Enough

Years

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Ambition

America

Animal

Art

Believe

Book

Bored

Brain

Challenges

Concern

Country

Couple

Emotion

Emotional

Enormous

Environment

Firsts

Fun

Gaps

Good Poetry

Greek

Grows

Hair

Hard Work

Hot

Jobs

Kind

Latin

Levels

Looks

Mean

Meditation

Men

Might

Monday

Morning

Needs

Normal

Not Good Enough

People

Puff

Red

Response

Revision

Senior

Shapes

Space

Thinking

Treasure

Way

The Future Blueprint

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The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

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The Autobiography

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The Relationship Therapist

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Quotes by Michael Longley

Michael Longley

A good poem is not completely a poem until it has received a critical response that grows out of the poem in an almost biological way.

Every Monday morning I try to remember to say “Thank you, Lord. I’m not at the Senior Staff Meeting.”

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 my versions are explorations.

I do feel that a poem needs not just space, but, ideally, space around that space – space for meditation, reverie, subliminal link-ups. I sense that poetry happens at a level above or below intelligence. It doesn’t come into being at a purely rational level.

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 mysteriously emerges.

I hardly ever look at my published books.

I suppose that as you grow older some sense of an accumulating oeuvre is unavoidable.

I think a philistine environment should be bracing for young artists. You have to make your own enjoyment, you’ve got to make your own art.

I was the first Arts Council official in the archipelago to do something for what you might call indigenous music.

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 destroy.

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