Our national poet WB Yeats said that every Irish writer had a decision to take: whether to express Ireland or exploit it. In his day, the choice lay between expressing the nation to itself or exploiting it for the amused condescension of a mainly overseas audience.Holding a mirror up to the people was a risky business: many, seeing an unflattering image, were inclined to smash the glass in anger.

A man [Joyce] whose earliest stories appeared next to the manure prices in the Irish Homestead knew that columns of prose, like columns of shit, could both recultivate the earth.

Declan Kiberd: Irish writers were an early warning system about abuseArtists played a vital role in the State's formation and since independence have held it to account