Seamus Heaney by Seamus Heaney

Route 110

A much admired sequence of 12 poems that ends with celebration of the arrival of first grand-child, Anna Rose, born to son, Christopher and his wife Jenny. Heaney collapses the distance between the mythical and the personal, setting out Aeneas-like on a staged journey of his own. In an interview with Eimear Flanagan for BBC Northern Ireland of September 23, 2010 Heaney commented that ‘oddly enough’ the poem began without any mourning intention, and was intended to mark a very happy family occasion. ‘Book VI, where Aeneas goes down to meet his father in the underworld, meets all the souls of the dead, the people he knew, people like his warrior friends … But then he is shown all the souls […]

Canopy

From the late 1970’s Seamus Heaney enjoyed a long relationship with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, initially as a guest lecturer. His regular presence enabled him to share the cultural calendar of America’s oldest established Ivy League university including a visual arts installation dating from May 1994. Its launch coincided with the spring-is-in-the-air suggestiveness of the most famous of the English madrigals, by Thomas Morley published in 1595 (Now is the Month of Maying). The installation lent a forest tree-top effect to Harvard Yard with added sights and sounds. In Heaney’s imagination it triggered something much more otherworldly. Spring was in the air (young green) and with it a hush of anticipation (whispering everywhere). An English visual artist had […]

Eelworks

In his interviews with Denis O’Driscoll that make up ‘Stepping Stones’ Heaney reveals his fascination, as he grew up, with Lough Neagh and his experiences of the eel trade (pp.93-4). The title of this 6-poem sequence refers to the familiar local name for the Lough Neagh Fishermen’s Co-operative with which his future wife’s grandfather and father were connected. Heaney takes us into the fairy-tale period of courtship (win the hand of the princess). i Getting his feet under the table (being invited into a girl-friend’s family home for the first time) was seen as a significant stepping-stone. In fairy-tales the male aspirant, a standard figure, had to jump through hoops (tasks the youngest son had to perform) to prove he was worthy […]

Afterthoughts

Human Chain – what is in a title? How does Heaney turn poetic charge into poetry? Heaney provides a music pleasing to the ear Heaney is a meticulous craftsman Using assonance Using alliteration Creating a word-picture Heaney and ‘languages’. Human Chain – what is in a title? Heaney is a master of title, whether for a collection or an individual piece. His sometimes enigmatic, often ingenious headings invite the attentive reader to seek subtly submerged attachments. As regards Human Chain, it emerges that Heaney was carried down the stairs of the accommodation he was sharing with friends when his illness struck en route to the ambulance; he is a hefty six-footer and recognises the physical challenge that this represented. Within a short time he […]