Dublin Writers Festival 2009 - 2nd to 7th June

In association with Faber and Faber. Supported by The Irish Times.

The Evening will be introduced by writer and broadcaster Olivia O’Leary

“Anyone who reads poetry has reason to rejoice at living in the age when Seamus Heaney is writing”

The New York Times Book Review

This year marks two landmark anniversaries: the 70th birthday of poet Seamus Heaney; and the 80th of iconic publishing house Faber and Faber. To celebrate, Dublin Writers Festival presents a one-off event with the Nobel laureate as he reads a personal selection from a lifetime’s poetry.

In March this year Heaney won the prestigious David Cohen prize, awarded for ‘a lifetime's excellence in literature’. It honoured a seminal body of work, spanning the poet’s career from his1966 debut Death of a Naturalist to his latest translation, Robert Henryson's medieval Scottish masterpiece Testament of Cresseid. Between those milestones, Heaney has twice won the Whitbread – for The Spirit Level (‘96) and Beowulf (‘99); the T.S. Eliot prize – for District and Circle (‘06); and the ultimate literary accolade: the Nobel in 1995.

Heaney's poetry shares Patrick Kavanagh's belief in the capacity of the local and the parochial to reveal the universal. That universality is reflected in Heaney’s standing today as a truly international figure. Catch him at his evocative best – bringing gravity, cadence and warmth to his own verse.

Back