Nobel Laureate to lead Tara celebrations
14/08/2008 - 16:11:34Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney will head up a celebration of Tara at the controversial site of the M3 motorway, organisers said today.
He will be joined by Pulitzer prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon and a host of Irish musicians and poets at the Feis Teamhra, or turn on Tara, Co Meath, next Sunday.
The free event, which takes place on the first day of Heritage Week, is being organised by Save Tara campaigners to allow the Irish Diaspora to honour the historic Hill of Tara.
The critically-acclaimed poet has been vocal in his opposition to the construction of the motorway at the site of the ancient seat of power.
In a recent BBC interview, he said the motorway: “literally desecrates an area - I mean the word means to desacralise and, for centuries, the Tara landscape and the Tara sites have been regarded as part of the sacred ground.
“If ever there was a place that deserved to be preserved in the name of the dead generations from pre-historic times... it was Tara.”
Other Irish exports who will perform on the day are Grammy award-winner Susan McKeown, Laoise Kelly and Aidan Brennan.
Another outspoken critic of the motorway is Muldoon who penned a poem Tara of the Kings in 2006 which was later turned into a song by his band Rackett.
“The routing of a busy road slap bang through the Tara-Skryne Valley represents an act of vandalism with not only national, but international, ramifications,” he wrote in the New York Times last year.
He also joined Susan McKeown in a musical, harpers protest outside the Irish consulate in New York last September when harpers in Ireland played outside the Dail.
The event kicks off at 3.30pm on Sunday August 24 at the Mound of the Hostages, past the Tara churchyard.
Environmentalists have called for a halt to construction of the controversial motorway along its present route.
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