The Nobel-Prize-winning poet will be “in conversation” about his life and the influences and themes that inform his work. The conversation will be interspersed with readings from his poetry by four authors.

Seamus Heaney is arguably the most important poet writing in the English language. Ever since his first collection, ‘Death of a Naturalist’, was published in 1966 he has been recognised as a towering presence in poetry. He has been garlanded with countless literary awards, both here in the British Isles and internationally, and he accounts for two-thirds of the sales of work by contemporary poets in Britain.

Bernard O’Donoghue, who will be interviewing Seamus Heaney, is himself a distinguished poet and literary critic. Author of ‘Seamus Heaney and the Language of Poetry’, published in 1995, he is also a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford.

Nick Laird, an acclaimed poet, is also a lawyer, novelist and critic. His essays, reviews and poems have appeared in various publications in Britain and America, including The Guardian and The Times. His latest poetry collection ‘On Purpose’ was published in 2007, and a second novel, ‘Glover’s Mistake’, was published in 2009.

Andrew O’Hagan, an acclaimed author and critic, was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 ‘Best of Young British Novelists’ in 2003. His novels include ‘The Missing’ (1995), ‘Personality’ (2003), and ‘The Atlantic Ocean’ (2008). The second of these titles won the 2003 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.

Jo Shapcott is President of The Poetry Society. She has published four volumes of poetry. She has been the recipient of many awards including the National Poetry Competition and the Forward Poetry Prize. The Transformers, due for publication in 2010, is a collection of public lectures she has given as part of her Professorship at Newcastle.

Jon Stallworthy, a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature, is a Professor of English Literature at Oxford. He has published seven volumes of poetry. He is also a prize-winning biographer and his subjects include Wilfred Owen.

The Royal Society of Literature is organizing this event in collaboration with Poet in the City. Poet in the City is a registered charity committed to attracting new audiences to poetry, making new connections for poetry, and raising money to support poetry education, in particular the placing of poets in schools.

With generous support from The Bloomsbury Hotel.