Poetry and music at Ireland's sacred site:"The harp that once through Tara's halls / The soul of music shed, / Now hangs as mute on / Tara's walls / As if that soul were fled." So wrote the man once regarded as Ireland's national poet, Tom Moore, in his evocative elegy for Meath's ancient and sacred site, which more recently has been the focus of controversy and protest over the construction of the adjacent M3 motorway.

Melodies of a poetical and musical kind will ensure that Tara is anything but mute tomorrow, when writers and musicians gather there to take part in Féis Téamhra: A Turn at Tara. Poetry Ireland, in association with National Heritage Week, presents this third Féis Téamhra in celebration of “the links between two of the country’s great traditions”.

Among the poets in attendance to build on that tradition will be Seamus Heaney, whose new collection, Human Chain,is published this week. (Heaney will also give a reading from the book, in aid of Cancer Care West, at NUI Galway on September 7th: tickets from cancercarewest.ie and Galway's Zhivago music shop.)

The Nobel laureate has denounced the Tara motorway as a “ruthless desecration” of a landscape that, he said, “deserved to be preserved in the name of the dead generations . . . Tara means something equivalent to me to what Delphi means to the

Greeks”. “The strings of the harp are being lashed by the tail of the tiger,” he said in response to official insistence on the motorway going ahead. That was when the tiger was still snarling.

Not snarling but more likely sweetening the Meath air will be Susan McKeown, the Dublin-born singer-songwriter now based in the US, as well as the guitarist Aidan Brennan and, appropriate to the setting, the harpist Laoise Kelly. This year's special guest at Féis Téamhra is Colm Tóibín, whose new collection of short stories, The Empty Family, is to be published shortly. Michael Longley and Paul Muldoon will also participate in the event, which takes place between 3pm and 5pm.

Remembering Francis Ledwidge

And so from the Hill of Tara to the Hill of Slane: the relationship between Francis Ledwidge and Ellie Vaughey will be explored this evening in a play, Faint Voice, by John McKenna, at Droichead Arts Centre. Vaughey came from a farm family on the Hill of Slane, and the relationship inspired several love poems by Ledwidge, who was killed at Ypres during the first World War. The poet, who was

born in Slane, is usually commemorated around this time of year with a Francis Ledwidge Day, an event that is being replaced this year by tonight’s performance of McKenna’s play by the Dublin Shakespeare group.

You can get more details – and tickets – from Droichead Arts Centre (041-9833946, droichead.com) or the Francis Ledwidge Museum (041-9824544, info@francisledwidge.com).

Scholars on the trail of Trollope in Leitrim

Leitrim’s main literary association is, of course, with the great and much-missed John McGahern. But the village of Drumsna is this weekend honouring one of Britain’s most successful writers of the Victorian era, Anthony Trollope. So close are the author’s links with the area that during the Anthony Trollope International Summer School (ending on Monday), a local bridge will be renamed in his honour, and there’ll be a walk along the new Trollope Trail around Drumsna.

There are several lectures over the weekend, including one by Dr Yvonne Siddle, of the University of Chester, who will discuss Trollope's first published novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran, and how it was influenced by his time in Drumsna. Priscilla Hungerford, of Britain's Trollope Society, will delve into the same novel in another session.

Details from Leitrim Tourism (071-9623274 or, from the North, 00-353 -71-9623274) or anthonytrollope.ie.