Lightenings ii
Heaney talked about the therapeutic role Glanmore played in his life : the formal purchase we’d arranged with Ann Saddlemyer restored us to the ‘beloved vale’ in Wicklow. Glanmore Cottage was available from then on as a completely silent place of writing, close to Dublin, no phone, no interruptions whatsoever. In fact, the second poem of the ‘Squarings’ sequence is an immediate act of thanksgiving for the cottage as a ‘bastion of sensation’. ‘Batten down’, it says. ‘Dig in. / Drink out of tin. Know the scullery cold’ -this was before we’d got the central heating. All that naturally sent a powerful surge through the system, as did the writing of ‘Fosterling’, which ended by stating that it was ‘Time to […]