I was aware that Heaney grew up with the so-called troubles on his doorstep and wondered did the trauma of those times have an effect on the poet's life?

And of course, he spoke to a very particular time in our lives, you know, the time of the troubles.

And he gave us some hope, you know, some kind of literal hope in the cure at Troy, looking, hoping for what he calls that great sea change on the far side of revenge and for a time when hope and history will reign.

So he gave us that.

But he also gave us, I think, a very humane kind of conflicted, if it's not the wrong word to use, conflicted sense of the conflict.

You know, he's very honest about it.

He talks about how human beings suffer.

Here is my final conversation with Damian Gorman, who like with several of the guests, I put my desert island question to him regarding what poem would he choose if he could only have one