Seamus Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. He has resided in Dublin since 1976 and visits Harvard University to teach and read every two years. His recent books are a selected poems Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996) (1998), an acclaimed translation of Beowulf (2000) and his selected prose Finders Keepers (2002). All are published in America by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This is Seamus Heaney's first reading at MIT.