Glanmore Sonnets – 7
VII The counselling voice Heaney Incertus sought in the title poem of ‘North’ is replaced by Heaney’s own voice pronouncing his eureka moment, a single word that corroborates the benefits and protections Wicklow offers fishermen in a storm and the Heaney family re-located in Glanmore Cottage. A clipped BBC radio voice intones sea areas (most of them) adjacent to Ireland (Dogger, Rockall, Malin, Irish Sea). Heaney envisions the turbulence they share – the colour, swell and thunder of the ocean (green, swift upsurges, North Atlantic flux). Poetic charge has been triggered (conjured) by the BBC radio Shipping Forecast announcer (strong gale-warning voice), his intonation falling (collapse) into the hissing consonant sounds of the forecast’s final listing –‘Faeroes, Southeast Iceland […]