THE strains of Seamus Heaney's poetry may have rung out on the London catwalks this week but the Nobel Laureate was in more relaxed surroundings on Wednesday night when he launched the Royal Irish Academy of Music's First Anthology of Poetry at the Academy. Heaney was joined by his wife Marie and the academy's president, pianist John O'Conor and his wife Mary.
The anthology is a compilation of poems most commonly used in Speech and Drama examinations and was edited by Margaret Turley and compiled by Theresa Doyle. Fianna Fail arts and culture spokeswoman Sile de Valera, Ann Kavanagh of the Dublin Youth Theatre, and chairman of the Dublin Theatre Festival Tony O'Dalaigh joined Irish-language poet Gabriel Rosenstock and Michael O'Ruairc at the event.