Heaney receives lifetime award for literary work

POET Seamus Heaney has won a lifetime achievement award for his contribution to Irish literature.

Accepting the Bord Gáis Energy Irish National Book Award from President Michael D Higgins, Mr Heaney said “writers and creative writers especially work in order to make something safe and sound in language, in order for others not to lose their souls.”

“This gives them a detached attitude to certain forms of success, forms of success which we have seen fail spectacularly and disastrously in the last few years,” he said.