Poetry Reading
Sunday 19th October 2025
14:00 - 16:00 at Waterstones, Cork
Thanks to John Breen for organising this event and for the invitation to participate.
I will be reading the first poem from Seamus Heaney's first collection, Death of a Naturalist
From Waterstones Cork:
To celebrate Irish Book Week and mark the publication of The Poems of Seamus Heaney edited by Bernard O'Donoghue et al (Faber) we are hosting a Sunday afternoon reading by more than twenty local poets. Each poet will read one of their own poems and a poem of their choosing by Heaney. This reading is a rare chance to see so many talented poets, many of whom are award winners reading not just their own work but also the work of one of our greatest poets who was an inspiration to so many of them.Seamus Heaney was the leading Irish poet of his generation and winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature. This new Faber collection is the long-awaited, definitive edition of his poetry. It encompasses all the poems Heaney published in his lifetime as well as the small number that appeared after his death: twelve single volumes, from Death of a Naturalist (1966) to Human Chain (2010), and those poems published in pamphlets, journals and magazines or with limited circulation. In addition, the book includes a selection of unpublished material chosen by the poet's family.
It is a body of work that, in its entirety, resounds with the 'lyrical beauty and ethical depth' cited by the Nobel committee: poems 'which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.'
