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Seamus Heaney holding a replica saxon helmet in 2002. PA Images
Let's Get Quizzical

Quiz: How well do you know your Irish poetry?

Will things fall apart for you in this quiz?

POETRY, EH? IT’S good in a crisis. 

It feels like the whole country at the minute is repeating that now-famous Seamus Heaney quote – “if we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere” – as we all look forward to the eventual end of this coronavirus pandemic.

If you are one of the people reading more poetry to get you through these strange days and weeks (0r even if you’re not) why not test yourself – how well do you know your classic Irish poetry? 

One of Seamus Heaney's best-known works is digging. Complete the opening line: Between my finger and my thumb, the squat pen rests; snug as a....
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Spade
Gun

Pint glass
Bug
Where was the "disused shed" Derek Mahon wrote about?
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Wicklow
Dublin

Waterford
Wexford
Finish this famous line: Wherever green is worn, are changed, changed utterly.....
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A terrible beauty is created
A really really terrible beauty is born

A terrible beauty is born
A shockingly bad beauty is born
Eavan Boland wrote a famous poem about the Famine. What is it called?
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Quarantine
Isolation

The Great Hunger
At a Potato Digging
Which poet described Dublin as: "She is not an Irish town and she is not an English town."
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Paula Meehan
WB Yeats

Louis MacNeice
Patrick Kavanagh
Whose ghost "came whispering" to Patrick Kavanagh in his poem Epic?
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WB Yeats
Patrick Pearse

Shakespeare
Homer
Outside which famous Dublin building did Paul Durcan profess to "making love" when he was a boy?
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Guinness Storehouse
The GPO

Leinster House
Áras an Uachtaráin
Who wrote the poem "The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks"?
Medbh McGuckian
Paula Meehan

Leontia Flynn
Nick Laird
Paul Muldoon once wrote a poem about an Irish roundabout. Where was it?
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Adare
Keady

Ballygawley
Carlingford
"We have no prairies to slice a big sun at evening" - which Irish poet wrote these lines?
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Patrick Kavanagh
Michael Longley

Seamus Heaney
Ciaran Carson
Answer all the questions to see your result!
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You scored out of !
Top dog
You nailed it
Share your result:
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You scored out of !
Clever cat
Almost purrfect
Share your result:
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You scored out of !
Fintastic
A good effort
Share your result:
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You scored out of !
What are ewe doing?
Baaaaaaaad
Share your result:
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You scored out of !
Turtely awful
A shell of a bad effort
Share your result:

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