The non-appearance of Sylvia Plath or Seamus Heaney was the talking point for most higher level Leaving Certificate English students last night.

A Journey With Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet

THE poems of WB Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh, Adrienne Rich and TS Eliot were examined in the second higher level Leaving Certificate English paper.

THE appearance of poets Derek Mahon and Adrienne Rich on yesterday’s English higher level Paper II was welcomed in Kilkenny, where students had made preparations with those in mind.

Bob Dylan, the unofficial poet laureate of the rock ’n’ roll generation, has now been officially placed alongside such literary greats as Philip Roth and Adrienne Rich, not to mention biographies of Shakespeare and Willem de Kooning.