"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations
"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy
I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike
"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]
"There is a break in the family history, where the ages accumulate and overlap, and the natural order makes no sense: it’s when the child becomes the parent of their parent."
It’s when the father grows older and begins to move as if he were walking through fog. Slowly, slowly, imprecisely.
It’s when one of the parents who once held your hand firmly when you were little no longer wants to be alone.
It’s when the father, once strong and unbeatable, weakens and takes two breaths before rising from his seat.
It’s when the father, who once commanded and ordered, now only sighs, only groans, and searches for where the door and window are—every hallway now feels distant.
It’s when one of the parents, once willing and hardworking, struggles to dress themselves and forgets to take their medication.
And we, as their children, will do nothing but accept that we are responsible for that life.
The life that gave birth to us depends on our life to die in peace.
Every child is the parent of their parent's death. Perhaps the old age of a father or mother is, curiously, the final pregnancy.
Our last lesson. An opportunity to return the care and love they gave us for decades.
And just as we adapted our homes to care for our babies, blocking power outlets and setting up playpens, we will now rearrange the furniture for our parents.
The first transformation happens in the bathroom. We will be the parents of our parents, the ones who now install a grab bar in the shower.
The grab bar is emblematic. The grab bar is symbolic. The grab bar inaugurates the "unsteadiness of the waters."
Because the shower, simple and refreshing, now becomes a storm for the old feet of our protectors.
We cannot leave them for even a moment.
The home of someone who cares for their parents will have grab bars along the walls. And our arms will extend in the form of railings.
Aging is walking while holding onto objects; aging is even climbing stairs without steps. We will be strangers in our own homes. We will observe every detail with fear and unfamiliarity, with doubt and concern.
We will be architects, designers, frustrated engineers. How did we not foresee that our parents would get sick and need us?
We will regret the sofas, the statues, and the spiral staircase. We will regret all the obstacles and the carpet.
Happy is the child who becomes the parent of their parent before their death, and unfortunate is the child who only appears at the funeral and doesn't say goodbye a little each day.
My friend Joseph Klein accompanied his father until his final moments.
In the hospital, the nurse was maneuvering to move him from the bed to the stretcher, trying to change the sheets when Joe shouted from his seat: Let me help you. He gathered his strength and, for the first time, took his father into his arms. He placed his father's face against his chest.
He cradled his father, consumed by cancer: small, wrinkled, fragile, trembling. He held him for a long time, the time equivalent to his childhood, the time equivalent to his adolescence, a long time, an endless time. By Your Side Nothing Hurts
Rocking his father back and forth. Caressing his father. Calming his father. And he said softly:
- I'm here, I'm here, Dad! "What a father wants to hear at the end of his life is that his child is there."
I love you, Dad, wherever you are, I always think of you, I will never forget you...
Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills We trekked and picked until the cans were full Until the tinkling bottom had been covered With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's. We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
- Seamus Heaney
Requiem For The Croppies
by Seamus Heaney
The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley...
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp...
We moved quick and sudden in our own country.
The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.
A people hardly marching... on the hike...
We found new tactics happening each day:
We'd cut through reins and rider with the pike
And stampede cattle into infantry,
Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.
Until... on Vinegar Hill... the final conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August... the barley grew up out of our grave.
- Seamus Heaney
Death of a Naturalist
by Seamus Heaney
All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragonflies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst, into nimble
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.
- Seamus Heaney
THE TOLLUND MANI
by Seamus Heaney
I
Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.
In the flat country near by
Where they dug him out,
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach,
Naked except for
The cap, noose and girdle,
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess,
She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen,
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body,
Trove of the turfcutters'
Honeycombed workings.
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.
II
I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate
The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards,
Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.
III
Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names
Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.
Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.
- Seamus Heaney
* * * * * * * *
John Duddy in A Bend in the River - Colin Broderick’s second feature, world-premiered at Belfast, is a melancholic journey following a writer as he returns to his native County Tyrone in Northern Ireland after 26 years
Colin Broderick’s sophomore feature, a psychological drama entitled A Bend in the River [+], was world-premiered at the Belfast Film Festival (18 November-6 December), following the rescheduling of the prestigious Northern Irish gathering owing to the first wave of coronavirus. The film follows his debut feature, Emerald City, the story of a crew of Irish construction workers set in New York.
The plot of A Bend in the River, penned by the director himself and inspired in part by his own life, centres on a forty-something writer called Matt Donnelly (played convincingly by John Duddy), who comes home to County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, after spending 26 years in New York. The writer’s return, however, is not as easy as expected, and soon, the man is forced to confront the many ghosts of his past: in particular, his never-forgotten first love, Katie (Kathy Kiera Clarke), his brother (John McConnell), an abusive school teacher (a short but impactful cameo by the late Pat Laffan) and two of his childhood friends, Declan (Brendan Broderick) and Paudie (John Connors), who did not leave Ireland during The Troubles and have presumably led a harsh, frustrating life. Declan, now married to Katie, is a violent man feared by the whole community and angered by Matt’s return.
All in all, the movie is a thorough, compelling journey into the man’s past and inner world. During his stay, Matt tries to write his new book and finds himself once again immersed in a hostile, closed-minded rural community, where no action can remain unnoticed and words spread like wildfire. The microcosm of characters encountered by Matt allows him to make sense of the Northern Ireland he remembers from his childhood and the place it has become today, as well as to reshape his own notions of “home”, “family” and “Irishness”. The narration is occasionally accompanied by a pensive – and beautifully written – voice-over expressing the thoughts of the writer, who tries to take stock of his new feelings and emotions. Aesthetically speaking, the dominant melancholic mood is masterfully conveyed through the rainy, desolate landscapes lensed by Shane F Kelly (The Last Right, Boyhood) and by a rich, dynamic original score composed by Colm Mac Con Iomaire (Out of Innocence [+], Dare to Be Wild).
On a very positive note, the story’s resolution manages to disclose just enough for the viewer while not taking an overly obvious path. Said conclusion allows the film to emerge as a sort of unconventional “parable of the prodigal son”, where great emphasis has been placed on the novelist’s experience of displacement. Both points of view – Matt’s one and that of those who stayed in County Tyrone – are explored in depth and contribute to delivering a credible piece. In addition, the picture serves as a powerful metaphor for a divided country, where the scars of the recent conflicts are still visible. Broderick’s independent flick is a simple but carefully crafted story that will hopefully find the recognition it deserves on the festival circuit and, later, through its distribution channels.
A Bend in the River was staged by Dublin-based outfit MK1 Productions.
Irene Falvey follows Colin Broderick’s film in which Northern Irish writer Matt Donnelly returns home to Tyrone having not been back for 30 years, to face the ghosts of his past.
A Bend in the River directed by Colin Broderick and starring John Duddy as Matt who journeys back into his past, battling demons he had long since run away from. The film opens with some beautifully lush shots of Irish countryside, green enough to make any expat weep. We get a quick flash of the current life Matt has carved out for himself – a once note-worthy Irish writer living in New York who is no longer able to coast on the success of his book and in desperate need of inspiration. There is a suggestion that he returns to Ireland. The idea comes from Matt’s editor; however, we get the impression that he won’t necessarily be welcomed back gladly into the arms of his native land.
While we can gather that Matt’s return will be more chaotic than comforting; it’s clear that as a writer he is willing to seek inspiration from anywhere, daring to tread on this land full of emotional minefields just to find the words he needs. Hiding away in the house of a local parishioner who has recently died, Matt, with the help of his brother, the local parish priest, sets about the painful process of trying to re-remember the ghosts from his pasts to dreg up some inspiration. Little did Matt know that these ghosts have not yet been buried, the people he has wronged or been wronged by are still present so Matt must face the errors and decisions he made about twenty-five years ago as if a day has not passed.
The isolation sought by Matt as a writer is not to be found in his native Tyrone village. Shots of idyllic rural countryside depict the ideal nature of country life, yet these images are juxtaposed with the social reality of life in this small town: claustrophobia, grudge-holding, and gossip. The villager’s reaction to Matt’s return generally ranges from disapproval to hostility. The people of Matt’s past are no longer the shadowy figures of his memory but live people in the flesh. He must now deal with them face to face; a jilted lover, an abusive schoolteacher, a local man whose fury is fuelled by the violence of the Troubles.
Beyond Matt’s personal history and problems, this film also speaks louder volumes about identity, belonging and the experience of ex-patriation and re-patriation. Matt describes that he belongs in neither America nor in his native country; he will always be somewhat of an outsider wherever he goes. The film doesn’t shy away from the trauma of Matt’s past, nor does it paint the village as a remorseless place without any solace or goodness to be found. The film expertly encapsulates the notion of identity as a sort of hinterland, an indeterminate location which we are always trying to reach but will always be out of the grasp of our full understanding.
Overall, A Bend in The River is a film which delves deep into the emotional landscape of re-visiting the past and demonstrates the effects of a landscape on a psyche. Some spots Matt visits bring back happy memories of childhood while visiting the church and his mother’s grave make him weep for what he never dealt with and has lost. Archive footage of the Troubles also reveals that there is grief far more significant than Matt’s personal wounds that have plagued this land he is revisiting; exemplified by the rage of the local men that feel Matt abandoned them while they had to stay there through the violence. This film is a poignant drama which deals with the power of memory and demonstrates how your past isn’t something that you can outrun but is instead something that can shape your present.
*DIR/WRI: Colin Broderick • PRO Julie Ryan • ED: Mike Foott • DOP: Shane F.Kelly CAST: John Duddy, Kathy Kiera Clarke, John McConnell, Brendan Broderick, John Connors, Nicola Boyle, Jacqueline Kealy
* * * * * * *
Digging
by Seamus Heane
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping.
sound When the spade sinks into gravelly
ground: My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the
flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato
drills Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the
shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright
edge deep To scatter new potatoes that we pickedLoving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a
spade. Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day Than any other man on Toner’s bog. Once I carried him milk in a bottle Corked sloppily with paper. He
straightened up To drink it, then fell to right away Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods Over his shoulder, going down and down For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the
squelch and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head. But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it.
Seamus Justin HeaneyMRIA (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is Death of a Naturalist (1966), his first major published volume. American poet Robert Lowell described him as "the most important Irish poet since Yeats", and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have said that he was "the greatest poet of our age".[3][4]Robert Pinsky has stated that "with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller."[5] Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world".[6]
Heaney was born in the townland of Tamniaran between Castledawson and Toomebridge, Northern Ireland. His family moved to nearby Bellaghy when he was a boy. He became a lecturer at St. Joseph's College in Belfast in the early 1960s, after attending Queen's University and began to publish poetry. He lived in Sandymount, Dublin, from 1976 until his death.[7] He lived part-time in the United States from 1981 to 2006. He was a professor at Harvard from 1981 to 1997, and their Poet in Residence from 1988 to 2006. From 1989 to 1994, he was also the Professor of Poetry at Oxford. In 1996 he was made a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and in 1998 was bestowed the title Saoi of Aosdána. He received numerous prestigious awards.
Heaney is buried at St. Mary's Church, Bellaghy, Northern Ireland. The headstone bears the epitaph "Walk on air against your better judgement", from his poem "The Gravel Walks".[8]
Heaney was born on 13 April 1939 at the family farmhouse called Mossbawn,[9] between Castledawson and Toomebridge; he was the first of nine children. In 1953, his family moved to Bellaghy, a few miles away, which is now the family home. His father was Patrick Heaney (d. October 1986),[10] a farmer and cattle dealer, and the eighth child of ten born to James and Sarah Heaney.[11] Patrick was introduced to cattle dealing by his uncles, who raised him after his parents' early deaths.[12] Heaney's mother was Margaret Kathleen McCann (1911–1984), whose relatives worked at a local linen mill.[13][14][15] Heaney remarked on the inner tension between the rural Gaelic past exemplified by his father and the industrialized Ulster exemplified by his mother.[12]
Heaney attended Anahorish Primary School, and won a scholarship to St Columb's College, a Roman Catholic boarding school in Derry when he was twelve years old. While studying at St Columb's, Heaney's younger brother Christopher was killed in February 1953 at the age of four in a road accident. The poems "Mid-Term Break" and "The Blackbird of Glanmore" are related to his brother's death.[16][17]
Heaney played Gaelic football for Castledawson GAC, the club in the area of his birth, as a boy, and did not change to Bellaghy when his family moved there.[18] However, he has remarked that he became involved culturally with Bellaghy GAA Club in his late teens, acting in amateur plays and composing treasure hunts for the club.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
from "Digging", Death of a Naturalist (1966)
Heaney studied English Language and Literature at Queen's University Belfast starting in 1957. While there, he found a copy of Ted Hughes's Lupercal, which spurred him to write poetry. "Suddenly, the matter of contemporary poetry was the material of my own life," he said.[3] He graduated in 1961 with a First Class Honours degree.[19]
Heaney studied for a teacher certification at St Joseph's Teacher Training College in Belfast (now merged with St Mary's, University College), and began teaching at St Thomas' Secondary Intermediate School in Ballymurphy, Belfast.[20] The headmaster of this school was the writer Michael McLaverty from County Monaghan, who introduced Heaney to the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh.[21][22] With McLaverty's mentorship, Heaney first started to publish poetry in 1962. Sophia Hillan describes how McLaverty was like a foster father to the younger Belfast poet.[23] In the introduction to McLaverty's Collected Works, Heaney summarised the poet's contribution and influence: "His voice was modestly pitched, he never sought the limelight, yet for all that, his place in our literature is secure."[24] Heaney's poem "Fosterage", in the sequence "Singing School", from North (1975), is dedicated to him.[25]
In 1963 Heaney began lecturing at St Joseph's, and joined the Belfast Group, a poets' workshop organized by Philip Hobsbaum, then an English lecturer at Queen's University. Through this, Heaney met other Belfast poets, including Derek Mahon and Michael Longley.[19]
Heaney met Marie Devlin, a native of Ardboe, County Tyrone, while at St Joseph's in 1962; they married in August 1965[15][19] and would go on to have three children.[1][2] A school teacher and writer, Devlin published Over Nine Waves (1994), a collection of traditional Irish myths and legends. Heaney's first book, Eleven Poems, was published in November 1965 for the Queen's University Festival.[26] In 1966 their first son, Michael, was born. He earned a living at the time by writing for The Irish Times, often on the subject of radio.[27] A second son, Christopher, was born in 1968.
Heaney initially sought publication with Dolmen Press in Dublin for his first volume of work. While waiting to hear back, he was signed with Faber and Faber and published Death of a Naturalist in 1966, and Faber remained his publisher for the rest of his life. This collection was met with much critical acclaim and won several awards, including the Gregory Award for Young Writers and the Geoffrey Faber Prize.[22] The same year, he was appointed as a lecturer in Modern English Literature at Queen's University Belfast. In 1968, Heaney and Michael Longley undertook a reading tour called Room to Rhyme, which increased awareness of the poet's work. The following year, he published his second major volume, Door into the Dark.[28]
Heaney taught as a visiting professor in English at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1970–1971 academic year.[29] In 1972, he left his lectureship in Belfast, moved to Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland, and began writing on a full-time basis. That year, he published his third collection, Wintering Out. In 1975, Heaney's next volume, North, was published.[30] A pamphlet of prose poems entitled Stations was published the same year.[31]
In 1976 Heaney was appointed Head of English at Carysfort College in Dublin and moved with his family to the suburb of Sandymount. His next collection, Field Work, was published in 1979. Selected Poems 1965-1975 and Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–1978 were published in 1980. When Aosdána, the national Irish Arts Council, was established in 1981, Heaney was among those elected into its first group. (He was subsequently elected a Saoi, one of its five elders and its highest honour, in 1997).[32]
Also in 1981, Heaney travelled to the United States as a visiting professor at Harvard, where he was affiliated with Adams House. He was awarded two honorary doctorates, from Queen's University and from Fordham University in New York City (1982). At the Fordham commencement ceremony on 23 May 1982, Heaney delivered his address as a 46-stanza poem entitled "Verses for a Fordham Commencement."[33]
Born and educated in Northern Ireland, Heaney stressed that he was Irish and not British.[34] Following the success of the Field Day Theatre Company's production of Brian Friel's Translations, the founders Brian Friel and Stephen Rea decided to make the company a permanent group. Heaney joined the company's expanded Board of Directors in 1981.[35] In autumn 1984, his mother, Margaret, died.[10][36]
Marie and Seamus Heaney at the Dominican Church, Kraków, Poland, 4 October 1996
Heaney became a tenured faculty member at Harvard, as the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory (formerly visiting professor) 1985–1997, and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Poet in Residence at Harvard 1998–2006.[37] In 1986, Heaney received a Litt.D. from Bates College. His father, Patrick, died in October the same year.[10] The loss of both parents within two years affected Heaney deeply, and he expressed his grief in poems.[10] In 1988, a collection of his critical essays, The Government of the Tongue, was published.
In 1985 Heaney wrote the poem "From the Republic of Conscience" at the request of Amnesty International Ireland. He wanted to "celebrate United Nations Day and the work of Amnesty".[38] The poem inspired the title of Amnesty International's highest honour, the Ambassador of Conscience Award.[39]
In 1988 Heaney donated his lecture notes to the Rare Book Library of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, after giving the notable Ellmann Lectures there.[40]
In 1989 Heaney was elected Oxford Professor of Poetry, which he held for a five-year term to 1994. The chair does not require residence in Oxford. Throughout this period, he was dividing his time between Ireland and the United States. He also continued to give public readings. So well attended and keenly anticipated were these events that those who queued for tickets with such enthusiasm were sometimes dubbed "Heaneyboppers", suggesting an almost teenybopper fan base.[41]
In 1993 Heaney guest-edited The Mays Anthology, a collection of new writing from students at the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge. That same year, he was awarded the Dickinson College Arts Award and returned to the Pennsylvania college to deliver the commencement address and receive an honorary degree. He was scheduled to return to Dickinson again to receive the Harold and Ethel L. Stellfox Award—for a major literary figure—at the time of his death in 2013. Irish poet Paul Muldoon was named recipient of the award that year, partly in recognition of the close connection between the two poets.
Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 for "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past".[44] He was on holiday in Greece with his wife when the news broke. Neither journalists nor his own children could reach him until he arrived at Dublin Airport two days later, although an Irish television camera traced him to Kalamata. Asked how he felt to have his name added to the Irish Nobel pantheon of W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett, Heaney responded: "It's like being a little foothill at the bottom of a mountain range. You hope you just live up to it. It's extraordinary."[45] He and his wife Marie were immediately taken from the airport to Áras an Uachtaráin for champagne with President Mary Robinson.[45] He would refer to the prize discreetly as "the N thing" in personal exchanges with others.[46]
Heaney was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1996 and was admitted in 1997.[48] In the same year, Heaney was elected Saoi of Aosdána.[49] In 1998, Heaney was elected Honorary Fellow of Trinity College Dublin.[50]
In 2000 Heaney was awarded an honorary doctorate and delivered the commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania.[51] In 2002, Heaney was awarded an honorary doctorate from Rhodes University and delivered a public lecture on "The Guttural Muse".[52]
In 2003, when asked if there was any figure in popular culture who aroused interest in poetry and lyrics, Heaney praised American rap artist Eminem from Detroit, saying, "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."[57][58] Heaney wrote the poem "Beacons at Bealtaine" to mark the 2004 EU Enlargement. He read the poem at a ceremony for the 25 leaders of the enlarged European Union, arranged by the Irish EU presidency.
In August 2006 Heaney had a stroke. Although he recovered and joked, "Blessed are the pacemakers" when fitted with a heart monitor,[59] he cancelled all public engagements for several months.[60] He was in County Donegal at the time of the 75th birthday of Anne Friel, wife of playwright Brian Friel.[15][61] He read the works of Henning Mankell, Donna Leon and Robert Harris while in hospital. Among his visitors was former President Bill Clinton.[15][62]
Heaney's District and Circle won the 2006 T. S. Eliot Prize.[63] In 2008, he became artist of honour in Østermarie, Denmark, and Seamus Heaney Stræde (street) was named after him. In 2009, Heaney was presented with an Honorary-Life Membership award from the University College Dublin (UCD) Law Society, in recognition of his remarkable role as a literary figure.[64]
He spoke at the West Belfast Festival in July 2010 in celebration of his mentor, the poet and novelist Michael McLaverty, who had helped Heaney to first publish his poetry.[69]
In September 2010 Faber published Human Chain, Heaney's twelfth collection. Human Chain was awarded the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection, one of the major poetry prizes Heaney had never previously won, despite having been twice shortlisted.[70][71] The book, published 44 years after the poet's first, was inspired in part by Heaney's stroke in 2006, which left him "babyish" and "on the brink". Poet and Forward judge Ruth Padel described the work as "a collection of painful, honest and delicately weighted poems ... a wonderful and humane achievement."[70] Writer Colm Tóibín described Human Chain as "his best single volume for many years, and one that contains some of the best poems he has written... is a book of shades and memories, of things whispered, of journeys into the underworld, of elegies and translations, of echoes and silences."[72] In October 2010, the collection was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.
Heaney was named one of "Britain's top 300 intellectuals" by The Observer in 2011, though the newspaper later published a correction acknowledging that "several individuals who would not claim to be British" had been featured, of which Heaney was one.[73] That same year, he contributed translations of Old Irishmarginalia for Songs of the Scribe, an album by Traditional Singer in Residence of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin.[74]
In December 2011 Heaney donated his personal literary notes to the National Library of Ireland.[75] Even though he admitted he would likely have earned a fortune by auctioning them, Heaney personally packed up the boxes of notes and drafts and, accompanied by his son Michael, delivered them to the National Library.[76]
Heaney was compiling a collection of his work in anticipation of Selected Poems 1988–2013 at the time of his death. The selection includes poems and writings from Seeing Things, The Spirit Level, the translation of Beowulf, Electric Light, District and Circle, and Human Chain (fall 2014).
In February 2014 Emory University premiered Seamus Heaney: The Music of What Happens, the first major exhibition to celebrate the life and work of Seamus Heaney since his death. [78] The exhibit holds a display of the surface of Heaney's personal writing desk that he used in the 1980s as well as old photographs and personal correspondence with other writers.[79] Heaney died in August 2013 during the exhibition's curatorial process. Though the exhibit's original vision to celebrate Heaney's life and work remains at the forefront, there is a small section commemorating his death and its influence.[80]
In September 2015 it was announced that Heaney's family would posthumously publish his translation of Book VI of The Aeneid in 2016.[81]
Seamus Heaney died in the Blackrock Clinic in Dublin on 30 August 2013, aged 74, following a short illness.[82][83][84] After a fall outside a restaurant in Dublin,[84] he entered a hospital for a medical procedure, but died at 7:30 the following morning before it took place. His funeral was held in Donnybrook, Dublin, on the morning of 2 September 2013, and he was buried in the evening at St. Mary's Church, Bellaghy his home village, in the same graveyard as his parents, younger brother, and other family members.[82][85] His son Michael revealed at the funeral mass that his father texted his final words, "Noli timere" (Latin: "Be not afraid"), to his wife, Marie, minutes before he died.[59][86][87]
His funeral was broadcast live the following day on RTÉ television and radio and was streamed internationally at RTÉ's website. RTÉ Radio 1 Extra transmitted a continuous broadcast, from 8 a.m. to 9:15 p.m. on the day of the funeral, of his Collected Poems album, recorded by Heaney in 2009.[88] His poetry collections sold out rapidly in Irish bookshops immediately following his death.[89]
...we in Ireland will once again get a sense of the depth and range of the contribution of Seamus Heaney to our contemporary world, but what those of us who have had the privilege of his friendship and presence will miss is the extraordinary depth and warmth of his personality...Generations of Irish people will have been familiar with Seamus' poems. Scholars all over the world will have gained from the depth of the critical essays, and so many rights organisations will want to thank him for all the solidarity he gave to the struggles within the republic of conscience.[90]
President Higgins also appeared live from Áras an Uachtaráin on the Nine O'Clock News in a five-minute segment in which he paid tribute to Seamus Heaney.[91]
Bill Clinton, former President of the United States, said:
Both his stunning work and his life were a gift to the world. His mind, heart, and his uniquely Irish gift for language made him our finest poet of the rhythms of ordinary lives and a powerful voice for peace...His wonderful work, like that of his fellow Irish Nobel Prize winners Shaw, Yeats, and Beckett, will be a lasting gift for all the world.[92]
I am greatly saddened today to learn of the death of Seamus Heaney, one of the great European poets of our lifetime. ... The strength, beauty and character of his words will endure for generations to come and were rightly recognised with the Nobel Prize for Literature.[92]
Harvard University issued a statement:
We are fortunate and proud to have counted Seamus Heaney as a revered member of the Harvard family. For us, as for people around the world, he epitomised the poet as a wellspring of humane insight and artful imagination, subtle wisdom and shining grace. We will remember him with deep affection and admiration.[92]
Poet Michael Longley, a close friend of Heaney, said: "I feel like I've lost a brother."[93]Thomas Kinsella said he was shocked, but John Montague said he had known for some time that the poet was not well.[94] Playwright Frank McGuinness called Heaney "the greatest Irishman of my generation: he had no rivals."[95]Colm Tóibín wrote: "In a time of burnings and bombings Heaney used poetry to offer an alternative world."[96]Gerald Dawe said he was "like an older brother who encouraged you to do the best you could do".[95]Theo Dorgan said, "[Heaney's] work will pass into permanence. Everywhere I go there is real shock at this. Seamus was one of us." His publisher, Faber and Faber, noted that "his impact on literary culture is immeasurable."[97] Playwright Tom Stoppard said, "Seamus never had a sour moment, neither in person nor on paper".[95]Andrew Motion, a former UK Poet Laureate and friend of Heaney, called him "a great poet, a wonderful writer about poetry, and a person of truly exceptional grace and intelligence."[93]
Many memorial events were held, including a commemoration at Emory University,[98] Harvard University, Oxford University and the Southbank Centre, London.[99][100][101][102] Leading US poetry organisations also met in New York to commemorate the death.[103]
Work
In order that human beings bring about the most radiant conditions for themselves to inhabit, it is essential that the vision of reality which poetry offers should be transformative, more than just a printout of the given circumstances of its time and place. The poet who would be most the poet has to attempt an act of writing that outstrips the conditions even as it observes them.
—from "Joy Or Night: Last Things in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats and Philip Larkin", W. D. Thomas Memorial Lecture delivered by Seamus Heaney at University College of Swansea on 18 January 1993.
Naturalism
At one time Heaney's books made up two-thirds of the sales of living poets in the UK.[3] His work often deals with the local surroundings of Ireland, particularly in Northern Ireland, where he was born and lived until young adulthood. Speaking of his early life and education, he commented, "I learned that my local County Derry experience, which I had considered archaic and irrelevant to 'the modern world', was to be trusted. They taught me that trust and helped me to articulate it."[104]Death of a Naturalist (1966) and Door into the Dark (1969) mostly focus on the details of rural, parochial life.[104]
In a number of volumes, beginning with Door into the Dark (1969) and Wintering Out (1972), Heaney also spent a significant amount of time writing on the northern Irish bog. Particularly of note is the collection of bog body poems in North (1975), featuring mangled bodies preserved in the bog. In a review by Ciaran Carson, he said that the bog poems made Heaney into "the laureate of violence—a mythmaker, an anthropologist of ritual killing...the world of megalithic doorways and charming noble barbarity."[105] Poems such as "Bogland" and "Bog Queen" addressed political struggles directly for the first time.[106]
Politics
Allusions to sectarian differences, widespread in Northern Ireland throughout his lifetime, can be found in his poems.[107][108] His books Wintering Out (1973) and North (1975) seek to interweave commentary on the Troubles with a historical context and wider human experience.[104] While some critics accused Heaney of being "an apologist and a mythologiser" of the violence, Blake Morrison suggests the poet
has written poems directly about the Troubles as well as elegies for friends and acquaintances who have died in them; he has tried to discover a historical framework in which to interpret the current unrest; and he has taken on the mantle of public spokesman, someone looked to for comment and guidance... Yet he has also shown signs of deeply resenting this role, defending the right of poets to be private and apolitical, and questioning the extent to which poetry, however "committed", can influence the course of history.[104]
Shaun O'Connell in the New Boston Review notes that "those who see Seamus Heaney as a symbol of hope in a troubled land are not, of course, wrong to do so, though they may be missing much of the undercutting complexities of his poetry, the backwash of ironies which make him as bleak as he is bright."[104] O'Connell notes in his Boston Review critique of Station Island:
Again and again Heaney pulls back from political purposes; despite its emblems of savagery, Station Island lends no rhetorical comfort to Republicanism. Politic about politics, Station Island is less about a united Ireland than about a poet seeking religious and aesthetic unity.[109]
Heaney is described by critic Terry Eagleton as "an enlightened cosmopolitan liberal",[110] refusing to be drawn. Eagleton suggests: "When the political is introduced... it is only in the context of what Heaney will or will not say."[111] Reflections on what Heaney identifies as "tribal conflict"[111] favour the description of people's lives and their voices, drawing out the "psychic landscape". His collections often recall the assassinations of his family members and close friends, lynchings and bombings. Colm Tóibín wrote, "throughout his career there have been poems of simple evocation and description. His refusal to sum up or offer meaning is part of his tact."[72]
Heaney published "Requiem for the Croppies", a poem that commemorates the Irish rebels of 1798, on the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. He read the poem to both Catholic and Protestant audiences in Ireland. He commented, "To read 'Requiem for the Croppies' wasn't to say 'up the IRA' or anything. It was silence-breaking rather than rabble-rousing."[112] He stated, "You don't have to love it. You just have to permit it."[112]
He turned down the offer of laureateship of the United Kingdom, partly for political reasons, commenting, "I've nothing against the Queen personally: I had lunch at the Palace once upon a time."[112] He stated that his "cultural starting point" was "off-centre".[112] A much-quoted statement was when he objected to being included in The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry (1982). Although he was born in Northern Ireland, his response to being included in the British anthology was delivered in his poem "An Open Letter":
He was concerned, as a poet and a translator, with the English language as it is spoken in Ireland but also as spoken elsewhere and in other times; he explored Anglo-Saxon influences in his work and study. Critic W. S. Di Piero noted
Whatever the occasion, childhood, farm life, politics and culture in Northern Ireland, other poets past and present, Heaney strikes time and again at the taproot of language, examining its genetic structures, trying to discover how it has served, in all its changes, as a culture bearer, a world to contain imaginations, at once a rhetorical weapon and nutriment of spirit. He writes of these matters with rare discrimination and resourcefulness, and a winning impatience with received wisdom.[104]
Heaney's first translation was of the Irish lyric poem Buile Suibhne, published as Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish (1984). He took up this character and connection in poems published in Station Island (1984). Heaney's prize-winning translation of Beowulf (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000, Whitbread Book of the Year Award) was considered groundbreaking in its use of modern language melded with the original Anglo-Saxon "music".[104]
Plays and prose
His plays include The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes (1991). Heaney's 2004 play, The Burial at Thebes, suggests parallels between Creon and the foreign policies of the Bush administration.[113]
Heaney's engagement with poetry as a necessary engine for cultural and personal change is reflected in his prose works The Redress of Poetry (1995) and Finders Keepers: Selected Prose: 1971–2001 (2001).[104]
"When a poem rhymes," Heaney wrote, "when a form generates itself, when a metre provokes consciousness into new postures, it is already on the side of life. When a rhyme surprises and extends the fixed relations between words, that in itself protests against necessity. When language does more than enough, as it does in all achieved poetry, it opts for the condition of overlife, and rebels at limit."[72]
He continues: "The vision of reality which poetry offers should be transformative, more than just a printout of the given circumstances of its time and place".[72] Often overlooked and underestimated in the direction of his work is his profound poetic debts to and critical engagement with 20th-century Eastern European poets, and in particular Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz.[114]
Use in the school syllabus
Heaney's work is used extensively in the school syllabus internationally, including the anthologies The Rattle Bag (1982) and The School Bag (1997) (both edited with Ted Hughes). Originally entitled The Faber Book of Verse for Younger People on the Faber contract, Hughes and Heaney decided the main purpose of The Rattle Bag was to offer enjoyment to the reader: "Arbitrary riches." Heaney commented "the book in our heads was something closer to The Fancy Free Poetry Supplement".[115] It included work that they would have liked to encounter sooner in their own lives, as well as nonsense rhymes, ballad-type poems, riddles, folk songs and rhythmical jingles. Much familiar canonical work was not included, since they took it for granted that their audience would know the standard fare. Fifteen years later, The School Bag aimed at something different. The foreword stated that they wanted "less of a carnival, more like a checklist." It included poems in English, Irish, Welsh, Scots and Scots Gaelic, together with work reflecting the African-American experience.[115]
Following an approach by Fintan O'Toole, the Heaney family authorised a biography of the poet, with access to family-held records (2017). O'Toole had been somewhat acquainted with Heaney and Heaney had, according to his son, admired O'Toole's work.[117]
In November 2019 the documentary Seamus Heaney and the music of what happens was aired on BBC Two. His wife Marie and his children talked about their family life and read some of the poems he wrote for them. For the first time, Heaney's four brothers remembered their childhood and the shared experiences that inspired many of his poems.[118]
In 2023 The Letters of Seamus Heaney was published, edited by Christopher Reid.[119]
^"Biography of Irish Writer Seamus Heaney". www.seamusheaney.org. Archived from the original on 24 February 2010. Retrieved 20 February 2010. Heaney was born on 13th April 1939, the eldest of nine children at the family farm called Mossbawn in the Townland of Tamniarn in Newbridge near Castledawson, Northern Ireland, ... Archived at Wayback Engine.
^ Jump up to:abcdParker, Michael (1993). Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. p. 221. ISBN0-87745-398-5. The deaths of his mother in the autumn of 1984 and of his father in October 1986 left a colossal space, one which he has struggled to fill through poetry.
^"A Note on Seamus Heaney". inform.orbitaltec.ne. Retrieved 20 April 2009. Seamus Heaney was born on 13 April 1939, the first child of Patrick and Margaret Kathleen (née McCann) Heaney, who then lived on a fifty-acre farm called Mossbawn, in the townland of Tamniarn, County Derry, Northern Ireland.
^Verdonk, Peter (2002). Stylistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 57. ISBN0-19-437240-5.
^Parker, Michael (1993). Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. p. 3. ISBN0-87745-398-5. Mrs Heaney bore nine children, Seamus, Sheena, Ann, Hugh, Patrick, Charles, Colum, Christopher, and Dan.
^Sophia Hillan, New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Autumn, 2005), pp. 86–106. "Wintered into Wisdom: Michael McLaverty, Seamus Heaney, and the Northern Word-Hoard". University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies)
^McLaverty, Michael (2002) Collected Short Stories, Blackstaff Press Ltd, p. xiii, ISBN0-85640-727-5.
^"Heaney 'catches the heart off guard'". Harvard News Office. Harvard University. 2 October 2008. Retrieved 15 May 2010. Over the years, readings by poet Seamus Heaney have been so wildly popular that his fans are called "Heaneyboppers."
^"Play Listing". Irish Playography. Irish Theatre Institute. Retrieved 24 August 2007.
^Boland, Rosita (17 June 2017). "Michael Longley: 'Being 77 and three-quarters is the best time of my life'". The Irish Times. Retrieved 17 June 2017. 'Seamus once thanked me for the way I dealt with what he called 'the N Thing',' Longley says, making tea. 'The N thing?' I ask, halfway through my sardine sandwich. 'The Nobel', he says. 'That I kept it in proportion – the way most of the world didn't. But I have had to be very judicious answering questions about Seamus since he's been turned into a kind of saint'.
^"Emory Acquires Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney Letters". press release. Emory University. 24 September 2003. When I was here this summer for commencement, I came to the decision that the conclusion of President Chace's tenure was the moment of truth, and that I should now lodge a substantial portion of my literary archive in the Woodruff Library, including the correspondence from many of the poets already represented in its special collections," said Heaney in making the announcement. "So I am pleased to say these letters are now here and that even though President Chace is departing, as long as my papers stay here, they will be a memorial to the work he has done to extend the university's resources and strengthen its purpose.
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