NOT only is Northern Irish poet Michael Longley the recipient of the American Ireland Fund 25th Anniversary Literary Award (valued at $15,000 and awarded last week), but his collection of poetry, The Ghost Orchid (Cape), is one of the British nominations for the Aristeion European Literature Prize (the other is The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie, also published by Cape). Two Northern Irish writers are the Irish nominees for the same prize: Eoin McNamee for Resurrection Man (Picador) and John Montague for his Collected Poems (Gallery). The Aristeion Literature and Translation prizes, the EU's major literary awards, were established in 1989 and are worth approximately £16,000 each.