Seamus Heaney 2018 by Seamus Heaney

An Ulster Twilight

A poet in his mid-forties revisits the lost domain of childhood at a festive time of year and confirms that the mystery of Christmas supersedes political boundaries. The speaker pictures the disorderly workshop of a local carpenter and its disparate contents: spare bulb … scatter of nails; wood sorted into lengths and sizes (shelved timber); light reflected on tools (glinting chisels); the accommodation is modestly built of corrugated iron. The carpenter concentrates on the task of smoothing the timber: Eric Dawson stoops to his plane. Time to complete his job is pressing: five o’clock on a Christmas Eve. The process is re-played before the watcher’s eyes: Carpenter’s pencil next followed by a series of tools and a final finishing touch: […]

A Bat on the Road

The epigraph is borrowed from James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: A batlike soul waking to consciousness of itself in darkness and secrecy and loneliness. The final nouns defining the main ingredients of bat-like existence (shortage of light/ enlightenment; drawing back from human contact; isolation even outsider status) are equally the metaphorical embodiment of the creative spirit, be it a Joyce or a Heaney; these factors count amongst the issues hampering Heaney at this stage in his poetical development. Placed here within a series of poems of transition the bat is a ‘soul-mate’, a liberating spirit. You would (the repeated action perhaps of an anonymous companion on the rural walks of Heaney’s younger days) dislodge bats […]

A Hazel Stick for Catherine Ann

The father recalls a stick he fashioned for his young daughter. Elements that were fleeting (gone), enduring (kept), animate (salmon) and inanimate (hazel twig) turned an everyday event into something remarkable. Compared to ephemeral natural examples (the living mother-of-pearl of a salmon/ just out of the water) the emblematic stick’s colourings were more enduring; it kept salmon-silver as it matured (seasoned)Ownership of the bendy, reassuring stick gave a status not easily surrendered: what you have you hold (literally and metaphorically ‘something to hang onto’ ). Its uses might be peaceful (to play with or pose with)or aggressive: lay about with. The stick reminds the speaker of a previous generation (points back to cattle), to an earlier father-farmer version, to the spatter and/ […]

A Kite for Michael and Christopher

A second poem about family lines: initially a father with his own father then this same father with his sons. The poem contains various themes: parenthood, the human condition, belief and doubt, the tethered spirit, the fate of being Irish. It is about ‘sticking together’. A generation ago All through that Sunday afternoon the kite flew,literally high in the sky, metaphorically unaffected by the restrictions traditionally imposed by the Catholic Sabbath: … above Sunday The plaything possessed a tightened drumhead body and wind-buffeted tail, likened to an armful of blown chaff, the latter offering it stability and proper flight; without it the kite would plummet to the ground. Heaney had observed its papier mâché construction and tested its properties: at first […]

The Railway Children

This touching poem portrays a world reduced to the dimensions of a child’s imagination. The speaker is one of a group of youngsters, brothers and sisters perhaps, exploring their neighbourhood. Their play brings them to the railway line. Mounting the slopes of the cutting brings them to the same height as the overhead cables (eye-level with the white cups/ Of the telegraph poles)and within hearing-range of the sizzling wires. The child is mesmerised by the cables: their written-script-like curvature Like lovely freehand; their extent as they stretch out miles/ east and miles west beyond us; the tests to which Nature subjects them: sagging/ Under the burden of swallows. The children’s understanding of telecommunications provides an attractive alternative to the truth: […]

Sweetpea

Beauty is fragile but it has a way of surviving the imaginative strategies of an inexperienced young gardener. The piece’s launch mimics the colloquial question asked half a century ago of people whose approach to a task turned out to be short-sighted:’ What did Thought do?(A typical response might have been ‘he followed a muck-cart and thought it was a wedding’ or even ‘he stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni’.) Heaney offers his variation: ‘Stuck/ a feather in the ground and thought/ it would grow a hen.’ Preparation of the sweet-pea patch is sound enough: its regular spacing, rod by rod we pegged the drill; its plant supports: light brittle sticks, twiggy and unlikely; its well […]

An Aisling in the Burren

The direction in which life takes people distances them from places to which they are emotionally attached. The allure of the Burren has never faded: A time was to come when we yearned… They are back. Poetic focus settles warmly on the animal, vegetable and mineral riches of its northern shore (overlooking the Bay of Galway), its considerable provision of small sea-fish along eel-drugged flats, its sea-weed and bird life. Nature’s species have evolved: vexed by sea-water brine-maddened grass ensures earthly riches of biblical proportions: the aftermath of the reign of the meek. Other developments (political, social, or environmental) are not nearly so rosy: what the speaker can see is as much of hope that the purest/ and saddest were […]

Widgeon

A short piece dedicated to fellow Irishman Paul Muldoon (b.1951); eminent Irish poet; Pulitzer Prizefor Poetry; T.S. Eliot Prize winner;Oxford Professor of Poetry (1999 – 2004). The bird is an innocent victim of Man’s hunting instincts. Correspondences with the victims of contemporary sectarian violence emerge strongly and the poet raises a critical finger against injustice, his compassion evident in both the literal and allegorical contexts. Heaney’s speaker is removing the feathers from the duck in preparation for the cooking-pot. Its death by shooting caused suffering: It had been badly shot. The plucker has discovered the duck’s voice-box / … in the broken windpipe; its vocal function is likened to a flute stop. The man’s response is both unexpected and moving: […]

Sheelagh na Gig

A three-poem sequence that celebrates a stone block Sheelagh na Gig, one of many, projecting from beneath the eaves of 12th century Norman/ Romanesque church at Kilpeck near the city of Hereford in England. I The positioning of the block is pinpointed. The figure crouches hunkering, high on the church-wall: We look up at her…/ under the eaves. The block has a structural rôle as if she bears the whole stone burden (that of the church roof) on the small of her back and shoulders; her elbows are locked in position: pinioned. She has an astute mouth (face or vulva is not made clear) and the gripping fingers that hold her lower body openinvite copulation: push, push hard/ push harder. […]

The Loaning

This sequence of three poems is inspired by an Ulster lane in a landscape very familiar to the poet. The poems share the sounds of nature or reflect the demeanour of rural folk in one form or another. The focus of the sequence shifts between fiction and reality: an initial surreal animation, then a scene of Ulstermen accustomed to each other’s company and finally a lament for things lost or threatening both to the ear and the soul. The Loaning’ does not contain such certainties as grace or transcendence, only shadows; MP perceives in the sequence a number of binary oppositions – human silence/ stasis mortality versus natural ‘speech/ motion/ mutability … the poet’s apprehension of contemporary brutality has stained […]

The Sandpit

Heaney’s title refers to the piles of sand in which youngsters were delighted to play. His four-poem sequence expands the idea to reveal the impact made on the impressionable young Heaney by the post WWII construction period. The speaker, now an adult, provides retrospective insights and judgements; the child he was is omnipresent. The poem offers a further dimension: both poet and bricklayer are constructing things that will survive them. 1. 1946 A 7 year old recalls the symbolic first spadeful of earth of post-war building development on rural farmland: The first hole neat as a trapdoor/ cut into grazing. Each hole is a double spade action (cut again)followed by the physical exertion of heft and lift. The metal blade […]

The King of the Ditchbacks

is dedicated to John Montague, man of Letters, born in New York (1929) and brought up in Ireland. Montague dedicated his poem ‘Hearth Song’ to Heaney and worked successfully with him in recording their work for Claddagh Records (1968). DOD (p495) In the final three poem sequence of Part 1 Heaney introduces the Sweeney of Sweeny Astray and Sweeney Redevivus (Part 3). He traces the early development of a remarkable relationship between a twentieth century living poet and a 7th century character from Irish literature who has loomed large in his poetic consciousness for more than a decade. I Contact is established with an ‘otherworldly’ presence that has invaded the poet’s space (As if a trespasser/ unbolted a forgotten gate)and […]

Part Two: Station Island – the Sequence

Part 2 traces a ‘pilgrim’s progress’; Heaney composes a sequence of 12 poems under a chosen topological heading. At least twenty five years separate his original experiences on Station Island and the moment at which he chooses the location to draw together the different strands. Much water has passed beneath Heaney’s emotional, ethical, aesthetic and spiritual bridges in the interim. The older poet and his younger self face a selection of ‘ghosts’ who express their opinions or respond to Heaney’s inner conflicts some of which have remained obstinately present despite the passage of time; the ghosts are friendly, sad, self-defining, exemplary, admonitory, rebuking (NC p115). the ghosts are predominantly shades the poet own dream-life who have actually existed in Ireland; […]

Station Island – the Sequence I

The first piece follows the aftermath of a young man’s decision to ‘go with the spiritual flow’ and undertake the pilgrimage. A dissenting voice pressures him in vain to abandon the pilgrimage and urges him to overcome the orthodoxy of his upbringing. The early-morning Sunday sounds that summon folk to worship are sudden and urgent: A hurry of bell notes, taking wing over morning hush. Landscape, climate and time of year are evident in the water-blistered cornfields. The fleeting sounds from the bell tower (an escaped ringing) hint at freedom but are quickly silenced. Nature is in a suspense of anticipation: silence breathed unsettled by the appearance of a countryman, pre-Christian in appearance , carrying a bow-saw, held/ stiffly up like […]

Station Island – the Sequence II

Heaney’s self-scrutiny is pursued in his encounter with the ghost of William Carleton (see below) on the road to Lough Derg. Carleton’s emphasis concerns politics and social turbulence. Pausing on the journey (parked on a high road)and savouring the sights and sounds of nature around him Heaney’s preoccupations are interrupted: something came to life in the driving mirror. The ghost visitor is quickly recognised: by the urgency of his gait; his rural garb (overcoat and boots), his physical characteristics (bareheaded, big), his purposefulness (determined) and his bustling confidence (sure haste along the crown of the road). The ‘man’ generates a knee-jerk response from the challenged poet: I was suddenly out of the car. He comes face-to-face with this aggravated figure […]

Station Island – the Sequence III

The pilgrim has gone to one of Station Island’s ‘beds’. His initial humble posture (I knelt)is followed by a pause: Hiatus.. This is not prayer but rather obedience of the protocols of the pilgrimage, a ‘pervasive element’ from Heaney’s Catholic upbringing. The mindset (Habit’s afterlife) has transported him back to bead clicks and the murmurs/ from inside confessionals. Textures and odours have invaded his sense-memory: the invasiveness of waning candles insinuating slight/ intimate smells of wax at body heat. Expectancy (an active wind-stilled hush) and a marine association (the sea-shell held to the ear in which the jugular hiss of blood-flow resembles that of the sea) seem to herald a magic happening: the ocean stopped … a tide rested and […]

Station Island – the Sequence IV

Heaney encounters the ghost of Terry Keenan whom he knew from childhood and who became a missionary father in the tropical rain forests. The certainty of Keenan’s religious convictions conflicts with Heaney’s lapsing/ lapsed status (the pilgrim stands with his backto the religious icons at the outset of the poem). The piece reflects upon religious certainty and the status of the priesthood in Irish society. The irony is that Keenan’s vocation led indirectly to his death. The pilgrim stands hesitantly in the centre one of Station Island’s penitential ‘beds’ my back to the stone pillar and the iron cross. He ispoised to go through the motions of penitential routine: ready to say the dream words (imagined rather than real)I renounce […]

Station Island – the Sequence V

The poet encounters three figures who have influenced his personal development. The first is with an old man finding forward momentum difficult: his hands, like soft paws rowing, who groped for and warded off the air ahead. He is identified first by name and then by schoolmaster status: Barney … Master. Murphy’s debilitated shuffle and weakened voice are shadows of his former self: bulling in sudden rage all over again. Respectfully Heaney fell in behind, knowing his place, a lesser mortal, like a man lifting swathes at a mower’s heels. Murphy’s sockless feet are reminiscent of Nature exhibits in the Primary classroom where he worked: the dried broad bean that split its stitches in the display jar. The pilgrim’s polite opening […]

Station Island – the Sequence VI

The pilgrim achieves sexual freedom. The happening is presented as a real event and not just the fantasy of a young Catholic adolescent male indulging in a brazen carnal act on a hallowed site. The poem’s third sonnet sets out the sexually frustrated adolescence that preceded it. Twenty-five years before Heaney encountered a girl without a name, a child of earth, her features and nature still etched in his sense- memory: the sunlit pigmentation on her skin (Freckle-face); her instinct-driven head of auburn colouring (fox-head); the texture and feel of her akin to pod of the broom; a fairy-like tree-spirit (catkin pixie); the gentle sound of her thighs as she walked: little fern swish. She turned up as if in […]

Station Island – the Sequence VII

The pilgrim has walked down to the water-line and felt soothed by just looking at it. The clear barometer of the water has brought relief from the issues that trouble him. There he sensed a presence un-reflected in the water (because a ghost has no mass to reflect). Hearing the sound of his name was unexpected: entering into my concentration/ on not being concentrated when he spoke; his reluctance to face the caller stems from his recognition of the man’s voice and recollection of his fate. The shock … at what I saw is etched on his memory: the victim’s face is as it was after his murder: his brow … blown open above the eye and blood. Strathearn seeks […]

Station Island – the Sequence VIII

If the aim of his Lough Derg pilgrimage was for Heaney to chastise his soul then he is not about to spare himself. The mood has changed: the soothing clear water of VII is replaced by the growing turbulence of some Wagnerian overture. The whole scene is chiaroscuro – gathering storm – black water … granite airy space above, white waves … furrows snowcapped at lake level in a strengthening wind. A black and white omen of both good and evil (magpie) struggles (staggers) to cope with the conditions, preparing the way for two black-and-white revenant figures, both dead, who will present themselves to the pilgrim. Lost in thought (staring) in the centre of the kneeling ‘station’ (hard mouth of […]

Station Island – the Sequence IX

The five sonnet sequence recalls a very troubled, wakeful night during Heaney’s pilgrimage to Lough Derg around 1960. Poetic licence entitles Heaney to introduce the shade of an IRA hunger striker (said to be a composite of Francis Hughes and Thomas McElwee who operated out of the Bellaghy area during the Troubles and eventually starved themselves to death in 1981 for the cause) held prisoner in the Maze prison and fasting very publicly to achieve prisoner-of-war status. The hunger-striker’s ghostly presence sets off a train of reactions that amount to a confession that Heaney’s reluctance to use his public voice has placed him in a less than honourable position and calls for a change of direction. A hunger striker’s voice […]

Station Island – the Sequence X

During Morning stir in the hostel on Station Island the ‘ghost’ of a drinking-mug drifts into the pilgrim’s sight. The communal cooking-area is primitive: pot/ hooked on forged links. Soot flakes. Plumping water … open door … hearthsmoke rambling. The heavy thuds of clay utensils take him back in time: a familiar object materialises (the mug). It is beyond his physical reach but clearly recognisable via the motif repeated around it: patterned in cornflower. It has survived across many years as a silent witness, quiet as a milestone It might beaged perhaps (old and glazed and haircracked) but it is still intact in its patient sheen and turbulent atoms. It isa passive, long-neglected household god: unchallenging, unremembered lars that […]

Station Island – the Sequence XI

A poem celebrating the retrieval and the re-energising of the self showcases Heaney’s huge talent for translation in his version of a mystical 16th century poem by San Juan de la Cruz. It suggests that everything can be explained without the necessity of God being present. The piece begins with the As if repeated three times in the final sonnet of canto IX. The poet dares imagine that his latent aspirations and talents, his prisms of the kaleidoscope once clouded by obstacles imposed on his formative years have emerged with astonishing potential: like a marvellous lightship. The ghostly face appears of a monk who once confessed Heaney frombehind a grille. The confessor’s lecture to a doubting, nay, lapsed soul is […]

Station Island – the Sequence XII

The returning pilgrim is setting foot on the mainland still filled with the memories and echoes of his three-day pilgrimage and still beset by the host of personal questions and doubts that have remained unanswered. The ghost he meets will tell Heaney in no uncertain terms that his anxieties serve no purpose. Clues from the text reveal this final ghost to be that of James Joyce, confirmed by Heaney in his notes. Drained by his experience and stepping ashore Like a convalescent from the Station Island ferry the returning pilgrim accepted a helping hand and sensed again/ an alien comfort. The stranger’s fish-cold and bony grip does not release his hand but whether to guide/ or to be guided is […]