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Nobel prize winning poet Seamus Heaney has joined Hollywood actress Charlize Theron and artist Louis le Brocquy in the campaign against the building of the M3 motorway in Tara valley in Co Meath.
The writer has donated a number of rare, signed works for sale at an auction which will also see a unique drawing of the Oscar winning actress sold off.
Money raised will pay for experts to travel to a Unesco summit in Canada next month as they lobby the body to discuss the M3 near the archaeologically-rich Hill of Tara.
Heaney has donated a signed limited edition collection of poems and two highly collectible works: In
Their Element, by Heaney & Derek Mahon;
Moore’s Melodies, edited by David Hammond, with an introduction by Seamus Heaney - both of which are signed - and a first edition of
Selected Poems 1966-1987.
The items will be sold off along with a unique pencil portrait of Oscar-winning film star Charlize Theron by artist Jim Fitzpatrick and a Louis le Brocquy print of
Human Image XIII.
Campaigners hope the UN body will designate Tara, which is already included in the World Monuments Fund’s 2008 Watch List of the 100 most endangered sites, as a world heritage site.
The public auction will take place some time in August.
