Seamus Heaney

At Féile an Phobail I introduced many speakers during the festival including Seamus Heaney who spoke at Sam Thompson’s grave in the City Cemetery before giving a talk on his old friend and school head master, Michael McLaverty. 7th August. Introduced Lara Marlowe...

Seamus Heaney Disputed

The depiction of a meeting between poet and Nobel Literature Laureate Seamus Heaney and myself prior to the 1981 hunger strike is at odds with my recollection of events. Recently, a new book, ‘Stepping Stones – Interviews with Seamus Heaney’ by Dennis O’Driscoll , was...
per pagina ad lux aeterna et amor

per pagina ad lux aeterna et amor

I loved this little book of stories and poems which the author, Martin Connolly, autographed for me at Scribes at the Rock in August 2018 shortly after it was published by Snowchild Press. Martin (from Belfast) is Professor of English Literature at Tsurumi University,...
Beyond The Working Class

Beyond The Working Class

The following feature is reprinted with the permission of Culture Matters and associate editor, Jenny Farrell, who reviews A History of Irish Working-Class Writing edited by Michael Pierse and published by Cambridge University Press, 2018. THIS book is to be greatly...

Where Are They Now?!

On 8th March, the weekend section of the Irish Times devoted a full broadsheet page to an astonishing photograph showing a backstreet Belfast scene from the early 1960s of a young, smiling Seamus Heaney, in an Aran sweater, surrounded by about fifteen joyous kids, at...