Glanmore Revisited 7. The Skylight

                           Seamus Heaney and his wife did not always see eye to eye in the contested zone of Glanmore Cottage. Heaney recounts one battle (Marie was the one for skylights) that he lost … it happened behind his back! Initial shock is eventually replaced by acceptance of what he cannot reverse. By nature Heaney disliked change: he saw something iconoclastic about taking a saw to Glanmore’s original wood ceiling (cutting into the seasoned tongue-and-groove of pitch pine); his writerly needs preferred something low and closed, a feeling of being enclosed (claustrophobic) in a private nest-up-in-the-roof. No water leaks there (snuff-dry feeling) thanks to the carpentry (perfect, trunk-lid fit); […]