Michael Longley - A Hundred Doors

Michael Longley, A Hundred Doors (Cape)

I saw Michael Longley reading at the British and Irish Poetry Conference at Oxford a few years ago. With Glyn Maxwell reading extracts from his plays and Deryn Rees-Jones taking an interest in her own sensual side, Longley was by far the star of the show, the venerable old warhorse not needing to get out of a canter to be best in show.

The subjects in this new collection of poems include flowers, birds, his grandchildren and the mortality of himself and others. He has a benevolent spirit that here makes of death more a kindly memory than the blind terror it is for others.

His poems are largely without affectation or special effects, often bringing to mind Edward Thomas, a strategy that must keep him in good books at home where he is married to a leading Edward Thomas authority. And in common with other poets from Ireland, he makes use of Irish place names. When you have licence to mention Carrigskeewaun in your first line, your last poem and several in between, you already have an advantage over one who lives in, say, Portsmouth.

Prelude is a fine short poem describing how the discomfort of the musician's sitting position finds its way into the music. Throughout, the poems are benign meditations and as accommodating as the poet with his pint of beer would also be. They appear to have so little art about them that it must be a technique and their honesty and sanguine attitude come so easily that we don't notice how well it has been done.