What I've learned from Seamus Heaney
Throughout the Troubles, Seamus Heaney remained determined not to be used but to express the truth as he saw it. On the day he is awarded the Irish Times Poetry Now prize for his latest collection, OLIVIA O'LEARYdescribes how her reporting on the North was guided by Heaney’s ‘cultural road map’
YOU MAY WELL ask why a journalist with no literary credentials should be writing about Seamus Heaney. There are two reasons. Firstly, the impact of his work on our national life, on the way we think about ourselves, has given him a cultural importance that poets should have but so often don’t. Secondly, I felt that impact particularly on my life and work as a journalist. And if it seems that I forget my place in making any connection between what journalists do and what poets do, let me state my case modestly.