Seamus Heaney 1939 - 2013

Like so many people in Ireland and across the world, we, in NCAD, were deeply saddened by the untimely death of the poet Seamus Heaney.

Seamus and Marie Heaney were supporters of the College and of NCAD's National Irish Visual Arts Library, in particular. This typical generosity has been universally acknowledged in all the responses to his death.

Every nation needs people to look after the society and the economy but we also need someone to look after our collective imagination. That is a role which artists, of all kinds, fulfill. Now that he is gone, there is a powerful sense of just how well, as a poet and a person, Seamus Heaney fulfilled that role for us.

May he rest in peace.

Professor Declan McGonagle, Director, NCAD