Dillon Johnston Critical- Poetry's Abracadabra

Poetry's Abracadabra offers a full appraisal of Michael Longley's poetic achievement, from his earliest work in the 1960s to the late collections published before his death in 2025. Written by leading poets and scholars of contemporary Irish poetry, this collection of ten essays reveals new insights into Longley's thirteen collections as well as his prose, interviews, and archival material. The essays in this volume explore his drafting process and dedicatory poems, his pastoral considerations of Western Ireland and eco-poetics, his various inspirations, from Philip Larkin to American women poets, and his masterful interpretations of Virgil and Homer. Placing Longley's career in the context of his Belfast contemporaries as well as the wider scope of contemporary poetry, this book confirms Donald Hall's assessment of Michael Longley as one of the great poets " whose work will endure while the English language does."