Seamus Heaney had an immense and unforgettable gift. His fluency, his sensitivity to the atmosphere of place, and his intuitive sense of moments brimming with extraness made his poetry and his equally marvellous prose essays lightning rods for the essence of what it feels like and means to be alive. Equally he articulated how the space left in life by the absence of the dead can take on a shape so powerful it becomes a presence in itself: an absence ‘emptied into us to keep’. 

Seamus Heaney: for Ann Saddlemyer

Call her Augusta

Because we arrived in August, and from now on

This month's baled hay and blackberries and combines

Will spell Augusta's bounty.

(RIP: 13th April 1939 - 30th August 2013)

Black Ice will be released in selected Irish Cinemas on Sept 20th 2013. Here's director Johnny Gogan and co-writer with me on the screenplay talking to DonadClarke

Brian Leyden reads from David Thomson's memoir Woodbrook at the 2013 International Seminar on John McGahern

THE HOME PLACE

Brian Leyden's best selling memoir The Home Place has been reissued. It is available in a new print on demand edition from amazon.com and as a downloadable e-book. This updated edition contains a new foreword and end chapter called No Meadows in Manhattan. Acclaimed Irish writer Joseph O'Connor say the Home Place is "An absolutely beautiful piece of work". And there isn’t a single word out of place in this wonderful book.  In a richly detailed evocation of family life and the place where he grew up, Brian Leyden walks us through his world and that of his neighbours and his community, casting a warm eye on its customs and history, beliefs and traditions and how they all fit together.  With its lyrical balancing of loss and humour the the Home Place is a book that will stay with you long after reading it. An Irish classic.