Dennis O'Driscoll's previous publications include New and Selected Poems and Reality Check. He is the author of a collection of essays and reviews, Troubled Thoughts, Majestic Dreams, and works as a civil servant in Dublin.
Praise for Stepping Stones <p> This really is a remarkable book. There isn't a dull, vapid or useless sentence in it; it's about what it is to be human, as much as it is about what it is to be a poet. --Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian <p> [ Stepping Stones ] is a Heaney word horde that will not be surpassed for some time . . . [It] will be seized on by students of the work as well as the common reader . . . [Heaney] is intensely present within these pages--still surprising, still defying 'the merciless landscapes' with generosity, courage and joy. --Bel Mooney, The Times (London)<p> [An] important book-length interview, designed to serve in lieu of a memoir . . . Dennis O'Driscoll [is] an excellent poet and critic, and a deeply informed and probing interviewer of his longtime friend. --Adam Kirsch, The New Republic <p> Stepping Stones succeeds on many levels, and O'Driscoll's intelligent probing to go beyond Seamus Heaney the public figure to the inner man, to the essential inner poet, is masterful. --Katherine Bailey, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)<p> These 'linked interviews, ' as O'Driscoll calls them, set out to trace, book by book, the contours of Heaney's writing life and the events and memories that inform it. To a great degree, they succeed. --Sean O'Hagan, The Observer (London)