Michael Longley: Northern Ireland's poet of nature

Contemporary Review, April, 2002 by Liam Heaney

In 'Badger', Longley suggests that deep and fundamental changes occur in the mind and in the imagination, as our perceptions of nature become more intimate and more sharply focused. 'So many stones turned over', as the badger is dragged away, may not only signify the poet's profound sense of loss at the death of the badger, but it may also demonstrate his frustration and annoyance that such a deed should have taken place in the first instance. There is also the sense in which the poet has mentally turned over every stone, considered all the possibilities and nuances, before the process of his art is finally realised. In this way, the badger is emblematic of the poet's struggle with self and with his artistic creativity, as well as with the ordered, yet harsh and brutal world of reality.

That many of Longley's poems possess an 'emblematic clarity', as Gerald Dawe argues, is evidenced yet again in his poem, 'The Osprey'. This poem vividly portrays the unique characteristics of the osprey, a bird of prey, which feeds on fish. Its ability to hover in the skies, to use its acute vision to locate its prey and the ease with which it takes fish from the lake, are particularly noted by the poet. However, at another level of interpretation, this 'inextinguishable bird' possesses qualities which go beyond it being merely a bird of prey. Like the badger that 'manages the earth with its paws', the osprey 'regulates his liquid acre' with a keen and precise power of vision, 'The trout each fathom magnifies'.

These particular talents or qualities of the badger and the osprey can be compared with those of the poet. Through the poet's unique and discerning perceptions of reality, he is able to observe and then to record his carefully considered ideas, in a form of language which is highly crafted and precisely measured. His vision or imaginative insight, like the acute ocular vision of the osprey, sharply focuses on the world of reality, providing 'an exploded view. Michael Allen proposes that Longley's second book of poems, An Exploded View, is essentially concerned with Longley's struggle for poetic identity. It is also interesting to note, that many of the poems in this particular collection, are specifically concerned with the landscape and with the world of nature, underscoring their considerable influence on Longley's thinking and on his poetic imagination.

The poet's capacity to manipulate in his mind, perceptions of the natural world, and at the same time to transcribe those thoughts into a clearly defined, ordered whole, might be usefully paralleled with the digging and the managing of the land by the badger's resourceful paws. For Longley, the creative process involves the mind contesting imaginatively that which it perceives. The osprey lives in the air but in order to survive it must be able to enter the water, thus living 'his unamphibious two lives'. Arguably, the medium of the air represents the poetic imagination of the artist, with his penetrating perceptions and his extended vision, while the medium of the water stands for the world of reality. The osprey, in this sense, is emblematic, not only of the poet's unique ability to astutely observe and record reality, but also of how the world of nature engages his imagination. Ultimately, for the poet and the artist, this engagement with the natural and physical phenomena of the world, must be confronted, if a greater understanding of self is to be achieved.