Heaney to give his papers to US university

Irish Nobel prize winning poet Seamus Heaney is to donate thousands of literary papers and letters to an American university.

The donation, which the poet announced before a reading last night at Atlanta’s Emory University, makes Emory the largest archive for the study of Heaney’s work.

He credited recently retired Emory President William Chace with his decision to add his papers to the university’s existing archive on Irish writers.

“Even though President Chace is departing, as long as my papers stay here, they will be a memorial to the work he has done to extend the university’s resources and strengthen its purpose,” Heaney said.

Emory also has the papers of Ted Hughes, WB Yeats and other writers.

Heaney’s papers cover his career from 1964 and include his correspondence with writers Hughes, Brian Friel, Anthony Hecht, Robert Lowell and others.

Heaney’s books include North and Field Work which explored the horrors of Northern Ireland’s sectarian violence.

Since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, he has continued to alternate writing with teaching as a guest lecturer at several universities, including Emory.