Seamus Heaney writing style by Seamus Heaney

A Herbal

after Guillevic’s ‘Herbier de Bretaagne Eugène Guillevic (1907-1957; b. Carnac, Morbihan, Brittany, France) who used only his family name; well-known French regional poet of the second half of the 20th century. The sequence comprises 19 short pieces, the longest of 15 lines. The dedication’s after confirms that Heaney is offering his own version of a French poem altered to adapt it to Ireland’s flora, his own non-coastal surroundings and to meet his own poetic priorities. He is loyal to the original text but omits some sections and re-orders others. He adds a personal incident involving himself and Marie Heaney where the original text offers the possibility. The sequence produces plants in their natural environment with human voices, emotions and distinct […]

Derry Derry Down

The title is taken from the refrain of The Keeper, a traditional song, ostensibly about a gamekeeper searching for female deer but loaded with the insinuation of sexual encounter. Heaney combines young speaker, factual experience, fairy-story and ‘still life’ Art form to describe pleasurable moments from his life. His two settings elevate the less refined sensuality of the original song. In 2011 Helen Vendler spotted Heaney’s subtlety – ‘Two mildly erotic snatches of pleasure ‘, she commented, adding ‘sensuous delight in Heaney has often a tinge of the erotic’. i Heaney was foraging for fruit close to his Mossbawn home. It was July and he spotted the assonant ripeness (lush sunset blush) of a full bosomed fruit (big ripe gooseberry). His daring attempt […]

The Baler

‘Against the cyclical, seasonal processes there is apprehension that our partaking in them is limited’ says Nick Laird. The solid, repetitive sound of a vital piece of agricultural machinery delivering its annual farming bounty unearths deeper feelings in Heaney for whom a sense of mortality has crept in: about being and dying; about self; about a specific friend in memoriam. Lying in his convalescent bed Heaney has been aware of a constant (all day … ongoing) background thud (clunk) familiar to him (baler) as unexciting as the heartbeat (cardiac-dull) and unappreciated as vital (taken for granted). The after effect of stroke has held him in a semi-conscious state all day (evening before I came to); full consciousness restores fond memory (hearing […]

Death of a Painter

In his obituary for the painter, Nancy Wynne Jones, in the Guardian of Wednesday 29 November 2006 Seamus Heaney demonstrated his respect and affection for the deceased artist referring to her paintings as ‘earthy and moist, with rich warm, subtle ochres and reds … place and palette and spirit all equal’. What, Heaney reflects, might we learn about Nancy’s canvasses and how she perceives things via the launch pad of her studio window? Not an overarching dome of sky (tent of blue) rather the sweep of rich yellow (peek of gold) of the Irish landscape that inspired her (Wicklow cornfield) from her first floor room (gable window) most beneficial (favoured coign of vantage) to her intense powers of observation (long gazing). With whom might she […]

The Riverbank Field

after Aeneid vi, 704-I5, 748-5I Heaney dips into literature, tracking back to Classical author Virgil of around 30 BC. References to his Aenied vi much cherished by Heaney from his Sixth Form studies onwards will provide him with some opportunity to show-case his own translation skills. The poem is far from a literary exercise however setting the poet firmly in his mid-Ulster landscape around Castledawson. His local Riverbank Field alongside the Moyola is deemed every bit as perfect as Virgil’s paradise. Scholarly translation (what Loeb gives) depicts Virgil’s Elysium alone. Heaney will create a watery fusion of classical mythology and mid-Ulster fact (I’ll confound the Lethe in Moyola). His Aeneas-like perambulation selects familiar place-names (Back Park … Grove Hill … Long […]

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 […]

A Kite for Aibhín

Heaney’s late addition to the collection is a poem of greeting to his second grand-daughter, Aibhín [aye-veen] born to son Michael and Emer. It echoes L’Aquilone, a lyric written by Italian poet Giovanni Pascoli. Heaney dips into elements of the original but adapts and edits to meet his own immediate writerly needs. Some factors are shared: a special event triggers a joyful and happy memory lying forgotten in the consciousness; memory offers at once pleasure hope and nostalgia. The evocation of succeeding generations and a family’s enjoyment at moments of celebration, the allegory of kite tugging against control and influence and unborn child waiting for release fuse into a memorable hymn of welcome. Heaney celebrates what is nearest and dearest in his […]

The door was open and the house was dark

Heaney’s ‘dream’ poem is dedicated to the memory of close friend David Hammond, much admired Northern Irish writer, singer, teacher, songwriter, historian, musician, film-maker and broadcaster who died in August 2008. As with all dreams the conscious and sub-conscious contribute ostensibly at random to the dream’s main ‘message’. In a BBC interview with Eimaar Flanagan of Sept 23, 2010 Heaney insisted the poem was not written – but dreamt. ‘The dream is just recorded in verse that rhymes. It was an extremely strange, haunting dream. One of those dreams that marks, that you don’t forget’. Heaney’s indirect reference (hence perhaps the quotation marks) to Virgil’s Aenied vi (ll.172-177) – ‘Death’s dark door stands open day and night. But to retrace […]

In the Attic

This four poem sequence circles around a young character from children’s fiction: initially the trials, tribulations and conscience that assail a youngster at sea exposed to terror and stress within his short fictional life. The sea-faring metaphor is extended to Heaney’s workspace to illustrate the interplay of reality and imagination triggered by an equally tumultuous existence. Enter thirdly a member of Heaney’s own human chain – his maternal grandfather (also featured in Haw Lantern’s The Old Team and the Clearances sonnets in memory of his mother) who confirmed memory-lapse as one of the drawbacks of the ageing process. Finally Heaney himself, showing symptoms of age in his turn but not done yet! Its final triplet confirms Heaney’s deeper structural intent. […]

Hermit Songs

Heaney dedicates his nine-poem sequence to long-time friend, American academic and author Helen Vendler. He celebrates those who have demonstrated resolute dedication to ‘books’ and scholarship, who have shut themselves off to a greater or lesser degree from wider society. Some hermit-scholars are legendary and monastic, scribes of illuminated texts; other ‘greats’ are much more recent. With characteristic modesty, Heaney includes his own experiences as part of the chain. The introductory couplet sets out the price of scholarship: its scholar-scribe has shut himself away to follow the mechanics of medieval manuscript production with its ruled quires. Secluded in his cell he cannot, however, shut out the external sounds of Nature’s joie-de-vivre: Above the ruled quires of my book I hear the […]

Lick The Pencil

In a sequence that ultimately reveals a deep, underlying sorrow two shades are recalled: Heaney’s father Patrick and Colmcille. In the 1940’s and 50’s there existed pencils that produced purplish, semi-permanent markings referred to as ‘indelible’ pencils. It was not uncommon for people to lick the point possibly, in their mind, to darken the script. The pencil and its marks come to symbolise things that do not readily fade away. i In search of nickname most suggestive of his father’s quirky ways and his farming skills Heaney establishes a shortlist. The first a peculiar mannerism (‘Lick the pencil’) associated with his father’s professional need to make tallies, record deals agreed in the cattle-market in which he worked. Heaney thinks back […]

Sweeney Out-Takes

A three-poem sequence dedicated to the noted contemporary Cork writer and poet Gregory of Corkus, pseudonym for Greg Delanty (b. 1958). Heaney reprises the internal struggles of the medieval Irish king of the Buile Shuibhne (Heaney’s published translation as Sweeney Astray, November1983) . See also the Sweeney Redevivus section in Station Island of 1984. The basic story tells of Sweeney’s behaviour towards Bishop Ronan that brings the curse of madness upon him. He is driven out into the wilderness where readers follow him in his crazed wanderings through the forest and hills, torn within himself by his love of the wild and his incurable loneliness. All three pieces bear inverted commas suggesting they are re-produced as, of course, are out-takes.. i Otterboy Heaney recalls a letter […]

Colum Cille Cecinit

In the first of three snippets from an 11th/12th century poem about the 6th-century scholar/saint Columcille Heaney renders the dignity and sacredness of daily toil and demonstrates his respect for scholarly labour. He indicated he had been loyal to the original Irish poem not reproduced here. Colum: from Latin columba “dove”. 6th C. St. Colm Cille (Columba) “dove of the church” (variously Colum Cille) is one of the most important Irish saints. Born in Donegal to a branch of the royal Ui Neill clan, Colm Cille was banished to Scotland where he founded the monastery on Iona and converted the pagan kings of Scotland to Christianity, Cecinit: Heaney draws directly from Latin using (full title) the 3rd person singular of the Perfect indicative […]

Wraiths

Three-poem sequence dedicated to Ciaron Carson, a fellow Northern Irishman, about ten years Heaney’s junior. Principally a poet and winner of a number of prestigious literary awards, Carson is also a novelist and accomplished musician with an interest in traditional Irish music and ways. Heaney is not quite done with the Gaeltacht pursuing the interplay of reality and make-believe contained in the poem Loughanure. i Sidhe (pronounced ‘shee’) The co-existent worlds where a man (a poet or a novelist-musician perhaps) and a creature of fairy-tale may inhabit the same space are worthy of record … a poem perhaps, why not a film? Scene One : the magic cavern setting in which a man-of-earth Caoilte figure was entertained by an unidentified female spirit […]

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 […]