The Studio Theatre, dlr LexIcon

Booking required via dlr Libraries Eventbrite.

Ten years on from his death, Seamus Heaney’s legend continues to grow. To celebrate a much-loved literary titan, dlr LexIcon presents Seamus Heaney in his Own Words.

Insights into his life and work will be shared by the poet’s son, journalist Mick Heaney, along with his editor, friend and fellow poet Christopher Reid. The two will be in conversation with writer Martina Devlin.

The man of letters was also a man who wrote many letters during his lifetime. Christopher Reid has edited the newly-published The Collected Letters of Seamus Heaney by Faber & Faber. Intimate, generous, funny, humble, witty and sometimes poignant – his correspondence spans half a century and offers a rare sighting of the private man behind the public poet.

The evening will include a dramatic reading of excerpts from the letters.

Mick Heaney is a journalist, columnist and broadcaster. For the past 30 years he has covered culture and the arts for The Irish Times, The Sunday Times and RTÉ, among others. He lives in Dublin with his family.

Christopher Reid has written many books of poems, for both adults and children. Among his works are A Scattering, which addressed the loss of his first wife and was named Costa Book of the Year for 2009, and The Song of Lunch (also 2009), a narrative poem which became the screenplay for a BBC2 film starring Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson. For most of the 1990s Reid was poetry editor at Faber and Faber, publishers of both Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. Letters of Ted Hughes, which he edited, appeared in 2007 and his edition of The Letters of Seamus Heaney in October 2023.