Róisín Ingle on Kathleen Watkins: She loved life, poetry and Gaybo. Conversation flowed from her like music
Kathleen Watkins was one of the most enthusiastic people I’ve ever met
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney 1939-2013 – “The space we stood around had been emptied” (Clearances, The Haw Lantern, 1987)
80 at 80 by Paul Durcan: a poet with a deep understanding
Through a lifetime of immense public and personal crises, through times of uncertainty and loss, Paul Durcan has remained true to his art
Singer Joan Baez to visit home of Seamus Heaney for poetry reading
The human rights campaigner will attend benefit screening of a documentary about her life in Dublin in December
Michael Longley: ‘Most men don’t like intelligent women. I just hang on their every word’
The poet met his wife, Edna, as a student at Trinity College Dublin. She has been the constant in a life that Longley reflects on in his new selected poems
Gerald Dawe: Belfast poet and academic who explored the everyday with wit and plain speech
Part of the so-called Coleraine Cluster of writers, Dawe explored a less-voiced north Belfast lower middle-class upbringing
Seamus Heaney pointed to an ecological spirituality that is furiously tender to the earth
Rite & Reason: As the environmental crisis has accelerated I find myself often thinking of the poet
Author Andrew Hughes on his new novel, writing the mind of a teenager and Killua Castle
Hughes’s new book, Emma, Disappeared, follows James Lyster, whose life begins to unravel after the disappearance of a high-achieving university graduate
In a Word...Good Friday
Seamus Heaney was born on Thursday, April 13th, 1939. ‘Thursday’s child has far to go.’
Oisín Leech: ‘I’m a much bigger dosser than you might think, but when I was writing these songs I worked incredibly hard for a year’
Clued-in fans would know the musician as one half of The Lost Brothers, but the solo work that began as something to pass the time during lockdown soon turned into an idea he couldn’t ignore
Simon Harris finds channelling Seamus Heaney is not so simple
The presumptive taoiseach used a familiar quote when introducing himself as leader, but whose line was it anyway?
SDLP’s New Ireland Commission explores path to unity through ‘partnership, co-operation and reconciliation’
Claire Hanna says ‘those of us who want to talk about a new Ireland have an obligation to spell out a lot more exactly what we mean by that’
Chris Agee: ‘I never considered my writing after my daughter’s death as therapeutic. Nor did I find it difficult’
The poet and editor on keeping a loved one’s memory alive, his literary journal Irish Pages and his regard for Seamus Heaney’s work
North stars: ‘The vitality of Northern Irish writing has always coincided with political upheaval’
Belfast has a healthy literary scene, closely connected with Queen’s University, whose creative writing tutors include poets Gail McConnell and Stephen Sexton
Bog body: Human remains about 2,500 years old discovered near Seamus Heaney’s home
The body of a young male was found in an area made famous by the work of the late Nobel laureate poet Seamus Heaney
‘It has been a wonderful, deepening time’: Alice Lyons on being the first recipient of the Heaney-Milosz Residency
Seamus Heaney and Czeslaw Milosz were firm friends and Nobel laureates. A writer’s residency has been established in Kraków in their memory
Aidan Mathews: ‘Read classics and trash in equal ratio. Copycat your mentors until they become tormentors’
Q&A: The author of Pure Filth on being a ‘roaming Catholic’, the problem with inviting Turgenev to dinner and the state of poetry
Eddie Linden obituary: A true literary representative of the islands of Britain and Ireland
From unhappy beginnings, he finally found his place as a champion and publisher of a glittering and eclectic assortment of poets
Roy Foster: Irish reunification ‘is nearer than I would have thought it a couple of decades ago’
The historian discusses an array of subjects, including the damage wrought by Brexit, comparing WB Yeats and Seamus Heaney, and why ‘the whole revisionism thing is over’
All That Glit – Frank McNally on the ancient origins of a slippery word
Patrick Kavanagh may not have used the word in his poetry, but Seamus Heaney did
The Collected Poems of Ciaran Carson Vols 1&2: Innovative works by important poet
Belfast-born poet’s writing was vast in its contemplation of time and mortality
The Letters of Seamus Heaney: ‘Flying kites in the imagination’
These magical correspondences often contain a word or phrase that later make their way into art
What’s the point of writing competitions?
Jen Herron recalls an experience that goes a long way towards explaining why she both loves and hates writing competitions
Remembering Seamus Heaney in Sligo
It’s no surprise the poet’s work had such a deep and immediate impact on me. I am also the son of farming stock
Poet Martin Dyar: ‘The world is changing but we can cling to Heaney in our uncertainty’
Curator of the Festival in a Van programme and nine other poets will remember Seamus Heaney, who died on August 30th, 2013, at an event in Co Derry this weekend
Seamus Heaney, by Fintan O’Toole: His death 10 years ago was ‘the end of a great eloquence’
Benign but not bland, temperate but not soft, the late poet is irreplaceable as a public figure
Remembering Seamus Heaney: Events and sales organised to commemorate poet’s anniversary
A reflective celebration is being held in Bellaghy while booksellers have organised dedicated collections
Queen’s University Belfast unveils plans for new €5.7m Seamus Heaney Centre
Original centre was opened by the Nobel Prize-winning poet in 2004
Justine McCarthy: We should thank Charles Haughey for Ireland’s Booker Prize success
To explore the success of Irish artists without mentioning Haughey is like staging Hamlet without the prince
‘A small project of national significance’: Seamus Heaney benches added to Devil’s Glen walking trail
Benches inscribed with poetry in Wicklow forest first public project by students at TUD’s school of architecture, building and environment
Getting to Good Friday: Literature and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland – an important book
Marilynn Richtarik’s readings of Bernard MacLaverty, Deirdre Madden and David Parks are real highlights
Untameable: This should be a bogwater-dull documentary. Instead it’s gripping
Television: The tone is elevated, as you would expect from a film about bogs from a text by Colm Tóibín, and focusing on Seamus Heaney
Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire: 250 years of Ireland’s touchstone love poem
Lament for Art O’Leary, which Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill wrote for her murdered husband on May 4th, 1773, is still hugely powerful
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