More than 20 years later, Heaney looks back on his decision to leave Belfast and recalls the political conditions of the time.
Heaney talks again about his decision to leave Belfast for Wicklow in the early 1970s in a radio interview recorded over 20 years later. He says he did not leave Belfast because of the political conditions but because he needed to find himself as a writer. As a young Catholic lecturer, he was often called upon to give media interviews. Much of what he felt about developments in Northern Ireland is captured in the poem 'Whatever You Say, Say Nothing,' which he reads from here.
