To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the death of Seamus Heaney, RTÉ presents a series of essential recordings from the archives.
Seamus Heaney was one of the early contributors to a new idea introduced in 2007 to RTÉ's Sunday Miscellany, the long-standing contributor-led programme of short new writing paired with complementing music or an occasional song.
Heaney contributed a short essay he titled Marked Present after he had been invited to write for a Sunday Miscellany special to be recorded live with an audience at Listowel Writers Week 2008.
The essay recalls the September morning Heaney registered his boys at their new school in Ashford, Co Wicklow. In the column relating to the father's occupation, without hesitating the school master committed to the page, 'as Gaeilge, the word 'file’’ as Heaney puts it, and he knew that a new life was beginning for him and for his children. Listen to Marked Present below:
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Lines from Heaney’s writing and references to his work as well as encounters with him, have appeared in numerous contributions by others to Sunday Miscellany over the years since its first broadcast in 1968.
It was natural then in 2009 to salute Heaney’s 70th birthday with an edition of the programme consisting of contributions relating to Heaney. In her essay Cathy Power recalls the first time she heard Seamus Heaney read his work. It was at the back of Kytler’s Inn at Kilkenny Arts Festival in 1974. She was recovering from a broken heart, and he lifted her up and out of herself.
Other writers whose essays feature and are read by them are Denis Sampson, Cyril Kelly, John F Deane and Vona Groarke.
