Sir, - Some time ago, I read Desmond Fennell's monograph on Seamus Heaney's poetry, "Whatever you say, say nothing - Why Seamus Heaney is No. 1". In the course of it, Des Fennell says: "Seamus Heaney is rarely quoted".
With this in mind, I read the transcript of Mary McAleese's inaugural speech; she quoted from the work of four poets - Louis McNeice, John Hewitt, Christopher Logue and W. B. Yeats - but not from the work of Seamus Heaney, a Nobel Prize winner.
It seems a strange omission on such an occasion, and surely proves Des Fennell's point. - Yours, etc.,
From Patrick J. Doyle
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Highthorn Park, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.