We are excited to announce that Trinity Literary Society will be hosting two poetry readings this term by Michael Longley and Don Paterson (5th March) and Robin Robertson (12th March), both at 6.15 in the OCR. MICHAEL LONGLEY and DON PATERSON, Weds 5th March, 6.15 Trinity OCR Described by Seamus Heaney as "a keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders", Michael Longley's work has handled subjects as diverse as Homeric literature, the landscape of Carrigskeewaun, jazz and the politics of Northern Ireland over a span of nearly fifty years. Praised for his formal power, and 'meticulous, unpretentious technique', his most recent collection, A Hundred Doors, won the Poetry Now Award in September 2012, and has been described as displaying 'proof in the continuity of poetic language with the world'. His other collections include The Echo Gate (1979), Gorse Fires (1991) which won the Whitbread Poetry Prize, and The Weather in Japan (2000), awarded both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Hawthornden Prize. He received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2001 and was made a CBE in the 2010 Birthday Honours. Named one of the Poetry Society's 'New Generation Poets' in 1994, Don Paterson's work has been praised for combining "postmodern playfulness with a sense of yearning for the transcendental". Paterson has said he finds truth not in beauty but in style, and his writing - from the towns and empty football pitches of his early work to the more inward-facing elegies of recent collections - mixes the colloquial with the erudite to create a sharp and distinctive voice. Since his 1993 Forward Prize-winning debut Nil Nil, he has published several collections including God's Gift to Women (1997), which won the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and his Landing Light (2003), which won both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award. He was made OBE in 2008 and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010. He currently teaches at the school of English at the University of St Andrews and is poetry editor for Picador. --- ROBIN ROBERTSON, Weds 12th March, 6.15, Trinity Old Combination Room Robin Robertson's work has been described as pitching 'the power and wonder of nature against the frailty and failure of the human'. Although human presence is frequently surreal and dislocated, it remains at the heart of his work. Robertson is a poet who finds song in silence, hope in a retreat into the 'homelessness' of the wild, all in a meticulously exact language, described as "simultaneously spare and ample". He is the first poet to have won all three categories in the Forward Prize: Best First Collection for his 1997 debut A Painted Field, Best Collection for Swithering in 2006, and Best Single Poem for 'At Roane Head' from 2010's The Wrecking Light. His most recent collection is Hill of Doors, described by the Guardian as 'a collection of flinty beauty'. He lives in London and is fiction and poetry editor for Jonathan Cape.
