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On Monday of this week I attended Stepping Stones - a talk with Seamus Heaney, Dennis O'Driscoll and Mark Lawson, to mark the publishing of the book of interviews of Heaney by O'Driscoll. This was at the Wyndam's Theatre at Leicester Square.

Heaney began by reading six poems of his and ended with the reading of a further two.

Outside the theatre, there were no posters or advertising of the event to be held inside, but the rows soon became full, which is an indicator of his popularity. In fact his fans have a name of their own - 'heaneyboppers.'

The tone of the evening was quite anecdotal and light. At one point Heaney remarked that when creating a poem, he goes from the stage of the poem as being linked with the word 'I', ie it is still in the process of being linked with himself and his thoughts, to being linked with the word 'It', when it becomes a thing in its own right. He said "I am not sure how you go from the process of 'I' to 'It'... except perhaps by adding a 'T!'

Lawson at one point talked about predictive texting, and informed Heaney that if you type in the word 'poet' you come up with the word 'soft', to which Heaney replied 'very good Mark!'

Dennis O'Driscoll, while seeming to be not as used to speaking publicly as the other two, spoke very deliberately and earnestly about his relationship with the poet. The book took six years to write, including interviews both face to face and online, and O'Driscoll commented of the differences in style between the two, ie how e-mail interviewing gives the interviewer more time to reflect, and how this self-editing can be both good and bad.

Heaney also talked about his reasons for turning down the poet laureate position, saying it was basically a fact that it was a full-time job that he did not want the responsibility of, and not for any political reason.

The surprise was that no copies of Stepping Stones were available on the night, but after hearing this three-way conversation I would say that for anyone interested in biography or poetry, this should be a fascinating read.