Michael Longley was born in 1939 in Belfast, where he has lived for most of his life. His second home since 1970 has been a cottage at Carrigskeewaun on the coast of Co. Mayo in Ireland. His Collected Poems was published by Cape in 2006 and in the US by Wake Forest University Press in 2007, and followed by A Hundred Doors (2011) and The Stairwell (2014) from both publishers. He has received many literary awards and other honors, including the T. S. Eliot Prize, Whitbread Poetry Award, and Irish Times Poetry Now Award. He was given the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2001 and made a CBE in 2010.