Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, for many years the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, has been appointed the Ralph Waldo Emerson Poet in Residence as of July 1, 1997, Jeremy R. Knowles, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, announced last month.

"I am delighted that the long and inspiring association of Seamus Heaney with this Faculty and with our students will be maintained, as he carries the title earlier borne by Robert Frost and Robert Lowell," Knowles commented. "Seamus will continue to be a truly luminous presence here, enriching the lives of both undergraduates and faculty colleagues."

Heaney will come to Harvard every other year for about six weeks to lecture and to give readings for the University community, to work in consultation with the Woodberry Poetry Room, and to conduct informal discussions with student poets. His first visit will be in the fall of 1998.

Heaney, who won the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature, became a visiting professor at Harvard in 1981 and was named to the Boylston Professorship in 1984. He has been teaching at Harvard and at Oxford University.