Ciarán Hinds reads from Seamus Heaney: A Life in Letters

‘The drama of last things, the melodrama, the terror of them, were there from the start; you’d hardly got out of the cot yet you’re already envisaging the death bed’.

In October 2023 we hosted Seamus Heaney: A Life in Letters, a tribute to the great Irish poet ten years on from his death. The event drew on Heaney’s public and private archives which had been edited into a book of the same name by Christopher Reid, to present the story of Heaney’s life in his own words. Among the readers of Heaney’s words were Nick Laird, Vona Groarke, Andrew O’Hagan, and Ciarán Hinds.

This video features the latter, reading from an extract titled ‘Getting Old’, in which Heaney, writing ‘in a mood of gratitude and confidence’ following his stroke, reflects on his Catholic upbringing, and how this shaped his view on the world – a view that would evolve and change as he grew older and drew on different influences. He also considers the concept of the after life and his own poems which connect with ghosts and celestial figures, and how ‘old age is the right country for old men’.

This video is presented with kind permission of both The Estate of Seamus Heaney, and Ciarán Hinds.

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