Transcript Seamus Heaney

By
Megan Miller
and
Kimberly Berlinghoff
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" If you have a strong first world and a strong
set of relationships then in some part of you
you are always free, you can walk the world
because you know where you belong, you have
some place to come back to."
Seamus Heaney at Magherafelt Civic Reception
January 1996
Seamus Heaney
/ʃeɪməs hiːni/
•Born
April 13, 1939
•In Bellaghy, Northern Ireland
•Poet
•Writing period 1966-present
Notable awards:
•Nobel Prize in Literature
•Golden Wreath of Struga
Poetry Evenings 2001
•Married Marie Devlin 1965
•Taught at:
Queen’s University
Carysfort College
University of Oxford
Harvard University
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Heaney
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Geoffrey Chaucer, Lord Byron,
T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, John
Keats, William Shakespeare,
William Woodsworth, William
Butler Yeats, Ted Hughes, and
Patrick Kavanagh.
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His mother’s family worked in the Linen
factories.
His father’s family were farmers.
He is Irish Catholic, and grew up in Northern
Ireland.
He translated poetry from Gaelic.
His pen-name when he first started writing
poetry was Incertus.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIzJgbNA
Nzk
Heaney references ‘the hiding places’ from
William Wordsworth’s The Prelude when
discussing some of his work; in particular,
Digging.
The hiding places of my power
Seem open; I approach, and then they close;
I see by glimpses now; when age comes on,
May scarcely see at all, and I would give,
A substance and a life to what I feel:
I would enshrine the spirit of the past
For future restoration.
William Wordsworth
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Poetry as:
“Divination”
“Revelation of the self to the self”
“Restoration of culture to itself”
“Elements of continuity, with the aura of
authenticity of archeological finds”
‘wherein the buried shard has as much
importance as the buried city itself.’
“A dig” ‘coming up with plants’
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Pen/Spade
Heaney explains: it pertains to when as a child
walking to school people would stop and ask
what grade he was in and how had he been
punished that day ending with the advice to
keep studying because ‘learning’s easy carried’
and ‘the pen’s lighter than the spade’.
Idea of “uncovering and touching the hidden
thing”
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Digging = Sexual metaphor or act of initiation
In reference to childish song:
‘Are your praties dry
and are they fit for digging?’
‘Put in your spade and try,’
Says Dirty-Faced McGuidan.
For Heaney this poem act of “initiation and
upon feeling the “excitement and release”
desired to repeat the experience.
References to generations and the cyclic nature
of farming
My father, digging. I look down (5)
By God, the old man could handle a spade. /
Just like his old man. (15-16)
Here are just three generations: grandfather, father
and son
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Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
/Bends low, comes up twenty years away
/Stooping in rhythm through potato
drills/Where he was digging (6-9)
Here is an allusion to the continuous work and
connection past/present/future that farmers put
into and have with the earth.
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Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods/Over
his shoulder, going down and down/ For the
good turf. Digging. (22-24)
Allusion to unearthing truths
Through living roots awaken in my head. (27)
Ideas and memories that are hidden or buried
there
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them. (28)
He has studied and found ‘the pen is lighter
than the spade’.
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Between my finger and my thumb/ The squat
pen rests./I’ll dig with it. (29-31)
Heaney will use the abilities he has, and with
his pen will find the words to rediscover his
culture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Heaney
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/19
95/heaney-bio.html
http://www.seamusheaney.org/seamus_heaney_biography.
html
Ramazani, Jahan, Ellmann, Richard, O’Clair, Robert. The
Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry
Vol. 2. W.W. Norton & Company. New York: New York.
2003.