Seamus Heaney focus of ‘tribute album’ by 50 leading poets

Simon Armitage and Lavinia Greenlaw among contributors to special issue of Poetry Ireland Review compiling writers’ tributes to their favourite poems

Fifty award-winning poets, from Simon Armitage to Lavinia Greenlaw, have contributed to a “tribute album” celebrating the work of the late Seamus Heaney, “our best poet, by a country mile”, according to poet and editor of Poetry Ireland Review Vona Groarke.

The Northern Irish Nobel laureate, who died in August 2013, aged 74, was the author of collections including District and Circle, The Spirit Level and Human Chain. Groarke, an award-winning poet herself, said she knew immediately that she wanted to dedicate an issue of Poetry Ireland Review to Heaney, focusing on “the rich haul of extraordinary poems he has left in his wake” rather than on “his gifts as a poet and a man”, already much celebrated by friends and colleagues.