Seamus Heaney

Gallery

‘I have another brother I didn’t know I had, or maybe I did’ — Bono reveals his father had a secret son

Bono has revealed he has a half-brother on his father’s side who was kept a secret from him growing up.

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Leading TV journalist Aideen Kennedy passes away

Popular TV presenter Aideen Kennedy has died shortly after announcing she had a terminal illness on social media and asking people to “keep an eye out” for her children.

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Gallery

‘Horslips was just a bunch of guys from an ad agency’ – Barry Devlin on becoming Irish rock and roll royalty

Sitting in the bar of Dublin’s Clarence Hotel, I’m looking at a video of Barry Devlin fronting Horslips on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test from 1974.

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Premium

Mairia Cahill Opinion And then he goes and spoils it all by singing something stupid

Poor old Gerry Adams just can’t catch a break. No matter what he does now, up come the ghosts of the republican movement’s past, and their relatives, to remind the rest of us that, unfortunately, he hasn’t retired disgracefully and just disappeared.

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Gallery

Northern Ireland’s political future remains contested but its literary scene is thriving

As in politics and society, so in literature. In Northern Ireland, male voices always dominated. Growing up during the Troubles, it was poets such as Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Paul Muldoon who gave voice to the trauma, and male novelists such as Bernard MacLaverty who told the stories that sought to make sense of it all.

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Novelist John Connolly: ‘Crime fiction is very interested in the idea that the past is never the past’

There is a dichotomy in Irish writing that acclaim, awards and even sales never seems to dent. We have our literary greats, people like Seamus Heaney, Anne Enright and Colm Tóibín – and then we have our genre writers,who, despite their success, somehow seem to occupy a second class of respectability. 

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Seamus Heaney films to premiere next year

Four short films are set to be made this year about the life and work of Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney.

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Obituary: Seamus Deane, literary lion, academic, poet, novelist and Derryman

Seamus Deane, who has died after a short illness at the age of 81 years, achieved international standing as a literary critic, academic, novelist and poet. Emerging from the historically oppressed and underprivileged community of Derry nationalists, he made his way to the top in a variety of spheres by virtue of his eloquence, intelligence and unrelenting hard work.

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Gallery

The brilliance of Seamus Heaney

Over the past year people have turned frequently to poetry in an effort to make sense of the bizarre changes happening to our world. Derek Mahon's 'Everything is Going to be All Right' got trotted out quite a bit but no phrase quite caught the public imagination like Heaney's: 'If we can winter this one out, we can summer anywhere'. The line gave us hope that the pandemic was temporary and, if we were patient, we'd come out the other side to a brighter future. A line from an interview rather than a poem, the simple phrase demonstrates Heaney's skill at finding hope in dark places, something that shines through many of his poems on the Leaving Cert course.

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Gallery

Why politicians love to reach for Seamus Heaney

That’s from The Cure at Troy, Seamus Heaney’s 1990 version of a play by Sophocles, and it has been referenced and quoted by various politicians, most recently Joe Biden during his acceptance speech as the Democratic candidate chosen to oppose Donald Trump for the US presidency.

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Biden quotes Seamus Heaney and promises to end 'darkness' of Trump era as he accepts Democratic nomination

Joe Biden accepted the Democratic Party nomination for the White House on Thursday, vowing to heal a United States battered by a deadly pandemic and divided by four years of Donald Trump's presidency.

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Ashford pays tribute to poet Seamus Heaney with exhibition

Ashford marked what would have been Seamus Heaney's 80th birthday with a seven day exhibition which launched on Friday night in the local Community and Heritage Centre and lasts until Thursday.

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BBC announces feature-length film on life of poet Seamus Heaney

The BBC has announced a feature-length film exploring the life of Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney.

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'Walk on air against your better judgement' inscribed on Seamus Heaney headstone

Seamus Heaney's famous line to "walk on air against your better judgement" has been inscribed as an epitaph on his gravestone.

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Gallery

Books: Digging for the real worth of Seamus Heaney

After his death last year, the London Independent newspaper described Seamus Heaney as "probably the best-known poet in the world". According to the BBC, Heaney's books of poetry at one time made up two-thirds of the sales of all living poets in the UK.

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Gallery

Seamus Heaney: A giant who wore his fame lightly

A year on from his death, Martina Devlin reflects on the word-weaver

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Play

President and Taoiseach lead tributes to the late Seamus Heaney

PRESIDENT Michael D Higgins and Taoiseach Enda Kenny have led tributes to the late poet and Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney.