Poet who called Sandymount his home is finally honoured

THE brothers and wife of the late Seamus Heaney joined the Lord Mayor of Dublin and poet Paul Durcan at the unveiling of a bust of the poet by sculptor Carolyn Mulholland in Sandymount Green last week.

Heaney lived in the Southside suburb for many years and had strong connections with the village before his death in 2013.

The short ceremony, which also commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his seminal first collection, ‘Death of a Naturalist’, saw the unveiling of the bronze work that faces directly across the green to a similar bust of fellow poet and Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats.

The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cllr Críona Ní Dhálaigh, said she was honoured to offer Seamus Heaney’s memory a resting place in the park and to give her fellow citizens the opportunity to view this work by Carolyn Mulholland.

“It is my wish, and that of Dublin City Council, that both Dubliners and visitors may take their ease and feel at home in the company of the immortal WB Yeats and Seamus Heaney,” she said.

Speaking about the unveiling, the Heaney family said: “We are deeply honoured that this bust of Seamus will be on public display in Sandymount, the place  that  Seamus called home for many happy years.”

 Sheila Pratschke, Chair of the Arts Council, said Seamus Heaney was forever a friend to artists and to the galleries, academies and public art buildings of this city and this island.

“His sense of social duty was generous and exemplary, and the Arts Council benefited constantly from his wisdom, his friendship and support,” she said.

“We are delighted that this elegant and sensitive piece of sculpture by Carolyn Mullholand will be on public display in Sandymount Green. It is more than fitting that Heaney be remembered in a place of public resort, he who did so much to build a ‘Republic of Conscience’, he who was conscientious in so many ways, so committed always to the idea of the civil and the civic.”

Fellow poet and friend of Seamus Heaney, Paul Durcan, added: “After the last time I met Seamus Heaney on Sandymount Strand I wrote to him a letter-poem entitled ’Sandymount Strand Keeping Going’.”

Also present at the gathering were many Heaney family members and friends, arts community figures, public representatives and other well-wishers.

 Death of a Naturalist, Seamus Heaney’s first collection of poems, was published in 1966 by Faber and Faber. The New Statesman (May 1966, Christopher Ricks) noted: ‘Literary gentlemen who remain unstirred by Seamus Heaney’s poems will simply be announcing that they are unable to give up the habit of disillusionment with recent poetry. The power and precision of his best poems are a delight, and as a first collection Death of a Naturalist is outstanding.”

The collection won the Cholomondeley Award, the Gregory Award, the Somerset Magham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Death of a Naturalist remains one of Heaney’s most popular and widely treasured collections, and includes well-known poems such as ‘Digging’, ‘Lovers on Aran’, ‘Death of a Naturalist’ and ‘Mid-Term Break’.