The Slain Birds

by Michael Longley

Michael Longley's new collection takes its title from Dylan Thomas - 'for the sake of the souls of the slain birds sailing'. The Slain Birds encompasses souls, slayings and many birds, both dead and alive. The first poem laments a tawny owl killed by a car. That owl reappears later in 'Totem', which represents the book itself as 'a star-surrounded totem pole/ With carvings of all the creatures'. 'Slain birds' exemplify our impact on the creatures and the planet. But, in this book's cosmic ecological scheme, birds are predators too, and coronavirus is 'the merlin we cannot see'. Longley's soul-landscape seems increasingly haunted by death, as he revisits the Great War, the Holocaust and Homeric bloodshed, with their implied counterparts today. Yet his microcosmic Carrigskeewaun remains a precarious 'home' for the human family. It engenders 'Otter-sightings, elvers, leverets, poetry'. Among Longley's images for poetry are crafts that conserve or recycle natural materials: carving, silversmithing, woodturning, embroidery. This suggests the versatility with which he remakes his own art. Two granddaughters 'weave a web from coloured strings' and hang it up 'to trap a big idea'. The interlacing lyrics of The Slain Birds are such a web.

Genres: Poetry, Nature, Birds

96 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2022

About the author

Michael Longley was a Northern Irish poet. Following his death, the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, called Longley "a peerless poet".

Reviews

[Alarie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I occasionally run across a British poet, most of those I read are from the U.S., and some from Asia. It was a surprise to sit down and enjoy this Michael Longley book published in 2024 and also sad to learn he died in January 2025. I’m glad he was able to see the publication of this latest book. His blurb is crammed with poetry awards.

I rarely run across poetry that is this brief and accessible. He dedicated this volume to his seven grandkids, who took roles in the poems, plus nature poems, mostly about birds, ancient Greeks, both historic and from myths (most featured the family of Odysseus). Other adult members of his own family were honored, too, especially his twin brother who died before him. It was easy to sit down and read straight through this collection. I also reread many of his poems to appreciate them a bit longer.

I was pleased to find the poems juggled by topic. That kept the book rolling along. All of the poems were short, some only as long as four lines. To save paper (I assume), he often put two poems very brief poems on one page.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second half of this collection was much more impactful than the first - I found the inclusion of the war poems at the beginning to be strange and not up to the level of the rest of the collection. However, I loved the rest, which was nature themed. It was very personal, but I felt the best poems were the ones which combined personal with nature. A worthwhile poetry collection.
Some of my favourite lines:

"I twine our souls with names from this landscape" - Names

"At Spring tide where will my soul be going?" - Wreck

"My granddaughters unravel a rainbow/ And, weaving a web from the coloured strings [...] hang up their web to trap a big idea" - Web

"To die like the skylard/ parched on a mirage/ or a tired quail / after crossing the sea / losing the will to fly and / dying in the first bushes / but not to live lamenting / like a blinded goldfinch" - Agony

[iainiainiainiain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael was capable of putting the delicate into words without ever stepping into melodrama or cliché. The Slain Birds is beautiful and heartbreaking and I'm sad he's gone.

[Anthony Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve resisted much contemporary poetry for a long time, and Michael Longley, whom I was familiar with through, I think, some longish poems I found difficult and had to teach, is one such poet. Besides, as I get older I find myself much more attracted to narrative or reflective verse or verse which I crudely describe as WYSIWYG.

The virtue of ‘The Slain Birds’ from my point of view is that, having decided to bite the Michael Longley bullet and having bought this 2022 volume, its poems proved to be, indeed, WYSIWYG. But that attribution should, I am delighted to say, only be understood as a virtue in that it allowed me access to small, deeply felt and tender inner responses to the outside world. These are poems that prefer to manifest themselves as not requiring rhyme, just lines of a regular syllabic count, where the first and last words of a line acquire weight. They are short enough not to make re-reading feel a labour: consequently, you know you are in the company of a master craftsman. These are poems whose quality does not need to shout for attention: they just hold it, naturally, seemingly without trying, and they have a tidiness about them that suggests time was duly spent on them. As someone now in his 70s, I found myself thinking from time to time that perhaps Longley is feeling that, when he writes so compactly, shaping his experience into significance, he is setting his house in order.

I delight in re-reading these gems of feeling: they celebrate, commemorate, lament, highlight moments Longley considers important, and range from the atrocities of the Holocaust to the Dartford warbler, or his twin brother’s death, or to one of his grandchildren’s model of the solar system. The collection’s colophon said a lot to me about the collection as a whole:

my grandson
and namesake
says the dark
is where you
can see what
you’re thinking

I don’t know if Longley composes in the dark, but these poems are certainly distillations not only of what he has been thinking, but also of what he has been feeling.

[T P Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very effective collection. The poems are all small little pieces but all the more powerful for that. They're all reflective and many are deeply personal. There's great power and thoughtfulness in this collection. A varied and affecting poetic anthology.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Something about this book made me fall in love. The ornithology tied into the book, as well as the snippets of stories that are told, which have hard-hitting impact, bring the book to life. The shifts in stories is shocking in a way, but the sort of way that leaves you wanting more.

[Peter B Waddell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The apparent simplicity of these poems conveys stillness, richness, significance. They seep from the distillery of haiku and meditation: glimpses, moments, sensings in essence. Thank you ML

[Simon Sweetman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely stuff. My first experience with his work. Not my usual cuppa tea but I really enjoyed these deep, resonant, spiritual pieces.

[Taylor Franson-Thiel · Rating 3 out of 5]

These poems are lovely. Very well rounded collection. They simply didn’t fully vibe with me at my point in life.

[Nika · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75*
Not bad just not my cup of tea

[Fraser Cattini · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning collection of poetry with a subtle beauty.