On 20 March 2014, Michael Longley gave a poetry reading at the Bramall Music Building as part of 'Creative Minds at Birmingham'.
The School of English, Drama, and American and Canadian Studies (EDACS) Writers and Artists Distinguished Speaker Series features an exciting variety of renowned writers, poets and theatre leaders giving an intimate talk or reading, showcasing their latest works.
Each event in the series gives literature and theatre enthusiasts the opportunity to hear from a modern-day great, pose your questions to the speaker, and meet them afterwards during book signing sessions.
Introduced by Professor Michael Toolan, Michael Longley is a central figure in contemporary Irish poetry. A forceful figure within the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, where he founded the literary programme, he is one of the 200 distinguished artists who are members of Aosdána.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a recipient of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry and the Wilfred Owen Award. In addition, he has won the Whitbread Prize, the T S Eliot Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry and the Librex Montale Prize.