ENCORES: The Literary Legacy of Seamus Heaney

This week, the Folger's Director of Programming Janet Alexander Griffin introduces a look back at two very special events from the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series.
In 1991, acclaimed poet Seamus Heaney inaugurated the Poetry Board Reading, a now annual program which gives distinguished writers an opportunity to share their favorite poems by other authors, as well as their own work. A filmed selection of that reading has been digitized from our archives, and we are thrilled to be able to share it with you for the very first time.
Heaney passed away in 2013, months before he was scheduled to read for the third time at the Folger. In his honor, poets Frank Bidart, Eamon Grennan, Jane Hirschfield, Paula Meehan, Bernard O’Donoghue and other friends and dignitaries gathered to remember warmly Heaney and to read his work and poems he inspired. Heard here is the moving tribute of fellow Irish poet Eamon Grennan.

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What a gift to have this reading available online. Thanks for digitizing it, Folger!