A Poetry Scholar’s Tribute, and an Alert, by Chris Watson On a recent visit to Ireland, coming through County Derry, I visited Home Place, which is described as ‘a major new arts and literary centre in Bellaghy, dedicated to the legacy of Seamus Heaney’. Heaney’s poetry is often built on memories of childhood family and … Continue reading
A RECOLLECTION by Danny Cusack Reproduced with permission from The Journal, the Australian Irish Heritage Association (WA) quarterly. In the summer of 1985, soon after my first move to Ireland, I attended the International Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature (IASAIL) conference in Belfast. On the closing day a small man in his mid-60s came over … Continue reading
The letters of this alphabet were trees’. Continue reading
So I wept for want of a lost love, as all sons their mothers. Continue reading
The Guardian published a series of photos of Seamus Heaney on the occasion of his death. They tell much about the man.
Mickey. Make the silence speak before you ever open your mouth. In other words never speak to a class or make presentation until you have their complete and undivided attention. Continue reading
Do you agree that when poetry and music meet and match, the magic of the senses release the greatest of satisfactions? Continue reading
For hard-line Republicans, Heaney has always been far too reluctant to take sides; for moderate nationalists, his efforts to locate the violence in the North within historically-based atrocities was seen as a compromise of his creative principles; whilst for many hard-line unionists, Heaney is, without qualification, a Catholic/nationalist and, thus, political writer, whose loyalties are already fixed to one side of the conflict. Continue reading
Another in Tinteán’s ongoing series of tributes to Seamus Heaney, arguing that Heaney’s rapid canonisation was due to his attractive subjects and themes, and to his poems’ suitability for contemporary criticism. Continue reading
The threat of sudden and violent death from those operating outside the expectations of civilised life is a resonant one for so many other places in our world, not least in Ireland. Continue reading
