Seamus Heaney, one of Ireland’s and, indeed, the world’s greatest poets, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. He passed away in 2013. I remember I was at a music festival in County Laois when I heard, half drunk in a field with all my friends and everybody was so shocked as the news began to make its way around the campsite. If ever you’re experiencing any of those pervasive, pesky, middle-aged doubts about whether young people still appreciate art or poetry, know that hundreds of twenty-year-olds at Electric Picnic in 2013 stopped what they were doing and wept when they that heard Heaney died, that every drink poured down their throats that night was first raised to his memory.
Seamus Heaney’s work often explored the tensions and violence in Northern Ireland between Protestants and Catholics, Unionists and Nationalists, as well as delving deeper into Ireland’s past, for example examining the phenomenon of bog bodies in his poem ‘The Tollund Man.‘
On this World Poetry Day, the National Museum of Ireland has Tweeted a photograph of a page of Heaney’s poetry, edited and annotated by the man himself, as a taster for what is in store for those lucky enough to attend their upcoming exhibition.
Seamus Heaney won the Nobel prize “for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past”. See his creative process in the papers – notebooks, scraps, and even backs of envelopes – which will go on show as part of our exhibition. pic.twitter.com/rDF08qswOz
— Nat Library Ireland (@NLIreland) March 20, 2018
According to the National Library:
“Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again”, a major international exhibition that will tell the story of the work of the Nobel Laureate and one of Ireland’s most loved writers. The exhibition will draw on our extensive archive of Heaney documents and will include diary entries, photos, note books and recordings. Opening in summer 2018 at the Bank of Ireland Cultural and Heritage Centre, College Green, Dublin 2, in partnership with the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and Bank of Ireland.
If given the chance to visit Dublin while it’s on, any self respecting book worm must make it their business to visit this tribute to one of the greatest poets of all time.
Featured Image Via The Times