Poets Gather to Remember Seamus Heaney

Poets Frank Bidart, Sven Birkerts, Eavan Boland, Lucie Brock-Broido, Greg Delanty, Jonathan Galassi, Eamon Grennan, Edward Hirsch, Jane Hirshfield, Yusef Komunyakaa, Paul Muldoon, Atsuro Riley, Tom Sleigh, Tracy K. Smith, Jean Valentine, Anne Waldman, and Kevin Young, and novelist Colm Tóibín will gather at Cooper Union for a public tribute to the beloved and world-renowned poet Seamus Heaney, who passed away on August 30, 2013, at the age of 74. Each will read a favorite Heaney poem, and Irish pipes will be played. Singer Paul Simon will make a special guest appearance.

The event is jointly organized by the Academy of American Poets, Poets House, Poetry Society of America, the Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y—along with Heaney’s American publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Cosponsors include Cave Canem Foundation, the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, Irish Arts Center, Kundiman, the National Book Foundation, PEN American Center, the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, Poets & Writers, Symphony Space, Teachers & Writers Collaborative, and Urban Word NYC.

See the “Seamus Heaney Tributes Press Release” (PDF below) for more information on this event and other remembrances.