Poet Grace Wilentz: ‘Ireland has been very generous to me. There’s an abundance of fresh air and bookstores and intellectual stimulation’
The New York-born poet on having resilience foisted upon her as a teenager when both of her parents died
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney 1939-2013 – “The space we stood around had been emptied” (Clearances, The Haw Lantern, 1987)
New poetry: Works by Niall Campbell, Elisa Gonzalez, John McAuliffe and John Fitzgerald
Reviews: The Island in the Sound; Grand Tour; National Theatre; and Long Distance
John Montague: A Poet’s Life by Adrian Frazier: ‘ruthless intimacy’
Adrian Frazier’s no-holds-barred biography of the American-born Irish poet acknowledges the cost of a life turned ‘into the achievement of poetry’
A Dante for Ireland: Exile and purgatory reinvented for the dislocated
Colcester, Florence, Belfast and elsewhere all intermingle in Philip Terry’s version of Dante’s Purgatorio
My Belfast friends can buy a house and start a family more easily than those in Dublin
In their daily lives, Northerners seem more grown-up than Southerners
Poets’ prose: Thinking about questions posed by poems, from Seamus Heaney to Eavan Boland
The Frontier of Writing: A Study of Seamus Heaney’s Prose edited by Ian Hickey and Eugene O’Brien; Citizen Poet: New & Selected Essays by Eavan Boland; Questioning Ireland by Thomas McCarthy
A Benedict Kiely Reader: Drink to the Bird and Selected Essays review - Words on the importance of place
Wisdom and deftness were tools of writer whose subjects ranged from the lyrical to the sectarian
David Marcus: Editing Ireland, edited by Paul Delaney and Deirdre Madden: Rich miscellany of poems, stories and reminiscences
This centenary compilation pays tribute to the pre-eminent editor’s mission to enhance and uphold Ireland’s literary culture
Róisín Ingle on Kathleen Watkins: She loved life, poetry and Gaybo. Conversation flowed from her like music
Kathleen Watkins was one of the most enthusiastic people I’ve ever met
80 at 80 by Paul Durcan: a poet with a deep understanding
Through a lifetime of immense public and personal crises, through times of uncertainty and loss, Paul Durcan has remained true to his art
Singer Joan Baez to visit home of Seamus Heaney for poetry reading
The human rights campaigner will attend benefit screening of a documentary about her life in Dublin in December
Michael Longley: ‘Most men don’t like intelligent women. I just hang on their every word’
The poet met his wife, Edna, as a student at Trinity College Dublin. She has been the constant in a life that Longley reflects on in his new selected poems
Gerald Dawe: Belfast poet and academic who explored the everyday with wit and plain speech
Part of the so-called Coleraine Cluster of writers, Dawe explored a less-voiced north Belfast lower middle-class upbringing
Seamus Heaney pointed to an ecological spirituality that is furiously tender to the earth
Rite & Reason: As the environmental crisis has accelerated I find myself often thinking of the poet
Author Andrew Hughes on his new novel, writing the mind of a teenager and Killua Castle
Hughes’s new book, Emma, Disappeared, follows James Lyster, whose life begins to unravel after the disappearance of a high-achieving university graduate
In a Word...Good Friday
Seamus Heaney was born on Thursday, April 13th, 1939. ‘Thursday’s child has far to go.’
Oisín Leech: ‘I’m a much bigger dosser than you might think, but when I was writing these songs I worked incredibly hard for a year’
Clued-in fans would know the musician as one half of The Lost Brothers, but the solo work that began as something to pass the time during lockdown soon turned into an idea he couldn’t ignore
Simon Harris finds channelling Seamus Heaney is not so simple
The presumptive taoiseach used a familiar quote when introducing himself as leader, but whose line was it anyway?
SDLP’s New Ireland Commission explores path to unity through ‘partnership, co-operation and reconciliation’
Claire Hanna says ‘those of us who want to talk about a new Ireland have an obligation to spell out a lot more exactly what we mean by that’
Chris Agee: ‘I never considered my writing after my daughter’s death as therapeutic. Nor did I find it difficult’
The poet and editor on keeping a loved one’s memory alive, his literary journal Irish Pages and his regard for Seamus Heaney’s work
North stars: ‘The vitality of Northern Irish writing has always coincided with political upheaval’
Belfast has a healthy literary scene, closely connected with Queen’s University, whose creative writing tutors include poets Gail McConnell and Stephen Sexton
Bog body: Human remains about 2,500 years old discovered near Seamus Heaney’s home
The body of a young male was found in an area made famous by the work of the late Nobel laureate poet Seamus Heaney
‘It has been a wonderful, deepening time’: Alice Lyons on being the first recipient of the Heaney-Milosz Residency
Seamus Heaney and Czeslaw Milosz were firm friends and Nobel laureates. A writer’s residency has been established in Kraków in their memory
Aidan Mathews: ‘Read classics and trash in equal ratio. Copycat your mentors until they become tormentors’
Q&A: The author of Pure Filth on being a ‘roaming Catholic’, the problem with inviting Turgenev to dinner and the state of poetry
Eddie Linden obituary: A true literary representative of the islands of Britain and Ireland
From unhappy beginnings, he finally found his place as a champion and publisher of a glittering and eclectic assortment of poets
Roy Foster: Irish reunification ‘is nearer than I would have thought it a couple of decades ago’
The historian discusses an array of subjects, including the damage wrought by Brexit, comparing WB Yeats and Seamus Heaney, and why ‘the whole revisionism thing is over’
All That Glit – Frank McNally on the ancient origins of a slippery word
Patrick Kavanagh may not have used the word in his poetry, but Seamus Heaney did
The Collected Poems of Ciaran Carson Vols 1&2: Innovative works by important poet
Belfast-born poet’s writing was vast in its contemplation of time and mortality
The Letters of Seamus Heaney: ‘Flying kites in the imagination’
These magical correspondences often contain a word or phrase that later make their way into art
What’s the point of writing competitions?
Jen Herron recalls an experience that goes a long way towards explaining why she both loves and hates writing competitions
Remembering Seamus Heaney in Sligo
It’s no surprise the poet’s work had such a deep and immediate impact on me. I am also the son of farming stock
Poet Martin Dyar: ‘The world is changing but we can cling to Heaney in our uncertainty’
Curator of the Festival in a Van programme and nine other poets will remember Seamus Heaney, who died on August 30th, 2013, at an event in Co Derry this weekend
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