LONDON (AP):
SEAMUS HEANEY, the Nobel Prize-winning poet, praised American rap star Eminem yesterday, calling him as influential in popular culture as Bob Dylan and John Lennon had been in their heydays.
Heaney, 64, was speaking before the start of the Prince of Wales' Educational Summer School in Norwich, where he was a guest.
He was asked by journalists in the eastern English city whether there was a figure in popular culture who aroused interest in poetry and lyrics in the way that Bob Dylan and John Lennon did during the 1960s and 70s.
Heaney, a former professor of poetry at Oxford University, said: "There is this guy Eminem.
"He has created a sense of what is possible.
"He has sent a voltage around a generation.
"He has done this not just through his subversive attitude but also his verbal energy."
Heaney is considered Ireland's greatest living poet and his many anthologies include North (1975) and Field Work (1979), which explored the horrors of Northern Ireland sectarianism.
Since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, he has continued to alternate writing with teaching as a guest lecturer at several universities, particularly Harvard.
