Madam, – I see from a headline in your newspaper that the poet, Seamus Heaney, is “in running for poetry award” (Home News, July 21st). Well, I ask you: isn’t that a bit much?
Couldn’t he just be allowed to sit down at his kitchen table and write a poem or two, without having to enter a race to win a poetry award?
Running in our present humid and rainy spell is likely to leave one short of breath and lacking in imbas forosnai (“creative intuition” to you and me), and soaked to the skin.
That is no way to treat our poets. Their standing army may not have fallen below 50,000 during Patrick Kavanagh’s time, but in our day their number won’t be anywhere near that (in spite of mass unemployment), if they are required to be athletic and physically fit as well. – Yours, etc,