Academy confers highest honour on Heaney

The Royal Irish Academy last night conferred its highest honour, the Cunningham Medal, on Nobel Laureate Séamus Heaney.

In a citation Prof Jane Conroy, secretary of the academy's humanities and social sciences committee, said Heaney had been chosen in recognition of his exceptional literary and scholarly distinction and achievement.

She said Heaney had been accurately described as the most important Irish poet since Yeats and was "being honoured for all the strands of his writing and particularly for his scholarship".

She told a capacity gathering in the academy's meeting rooms in Dublin that Heaney's career had spanned over 30 years and his "services to Irish literature have been outstanding".

Speaking before the Cunningham Medal was presented by the president of the Royal Irish Academy, JA Slevin, Prof Conroy said that even before he joined Yeats, Shaw and Beckett among the Irish Nobel Laureates, Heaney had received 13 doctorates from august institutions across the globe. She also noted his involvement with social causes including Unicef and Amnesty International.

The Cunningham Medal, described as the academy's "premier award", was established in 1789 at the bequest of barrister Timothy Cunningham to recognise outstanding contributions to scholarship and the objectives of the academy, which include the promotion of science, polite literature and antiquities.

Previous recipients have included William Rowan Hamilton, who was presented with the medal twice, and George Petrie, who was awarded it three times. Sir William Wilde, father of Oscar, was also a recipient. In more recent times, medals have been presented to George Francis Mitchell in 1989, to Denis J Bradley, Maurice Craig, Bernard Crossland and David B Quinn in 2001 and to Denis L Weaire in 2005.

Following the citation, Heaney gave a talk entitled Holding Patterns, Arts, Letters and the Academy. The paper discussed reflections on how the humanities inform consciousness and equip people as creatures of memory and reflection.

Heaney said he had been honoured "more than I can say that the academy has made this award to me".

But he said he also realised that "on this occasion the academy is recognising that poetry has a special contribution to make to 'the improvement of natural knowledge' and for that reason I am doubly grateful".

Heaney's Nobel prize for literature, awarded in 1995, cited his "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past".