CATHERINE HEANEY, daughter of the late poet Seamus Heaney, has announced that a new translation by her father is to be published in March 2016.
Faber & Faber will publish Heaney’s translation of Book VI of The Aeneid almost three years after the death of one of Ireland’s most distinguished poets and authors.
Ms Heaney said: "This translation is the result of work and revisions carried out by him over many years - from the 1980s to the month before his death [in June 2013] - and the decision to publish it was one our family took after long and careful consideration."
In Book VI, which is one of The Aeneid’s most famous passages, ancient Roman poet Virgil tells of the hero Aeneas’ journey into the underworld in search of his father.
Nobel Prize winner Heaney said that the epic poem had taken on special significance when his own father died in 1986, after which he began working on the translation.
Ms Heaney added: "Given its theme of Aeneas’ search for his father in the afterlife, it would be hard to think of a more poignant way for us to mark the end of our own father’s poetic journey."
