Winner:
2017 PEN Pinter Prize
A remote townland in County Mayo, Carrigskeewaun has been for nearly
fifty years Michael Longley's home-from-home, his soul-landscape. Its
lakes and mountains, wild animals and flowers, its moody seas and skies
have for decades lit up his poetry. Now they overflow into Angel Hill,
his exuberant new collection. In addition, Longley has been exploring
Lochalsh in the Western Highlands where his daughter the painter Sarah
Longley now lives with her family. She has opened up for him her own
soul-landscape with its peculiar shapes and intense colors. In Angel
Hill the imaginations of poet and painter intermingle and two exacting
wildernesses productively overlap. Love poems and elegies and
heart-rending reflections on the Great War and the Northern Irish
Troubles add further weight to Michael Longley's outstanding eleventh
collection. Angel Hill will undoubtedly delight this great poet's many
admirers.