Michael Longley lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has published eleven collections of poetry. His Collected Poems was published in 2006. His most recent book, Angel Hill, came out in June 2017. His previous book, The Stairwell (2014), won the Griffin International Prize. In 2001 he received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, and he has won the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, the Hawthornden Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. 

He is a Freeman of the City of Belfast. Michael Longley was appointed a CBE in 2010, and from 2007 to 2010 he was Ireland Professor of Poetry. Sidelines: Selected Prose 1962–2015 will be published this Autumn. He is the recipient of the 2017 PEN Pinter Prize.