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The Seamus Heaney Appreciation Thread on Sensitize © ...

Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 9:10 am
by Louis P. Burns aka Lugh
Seamus Heaney (Interviewed by Jenny McCartney)
Telegraph.co.uk wrote:In a rare interview, Seamus Heaney talks to Jenny McCartney about the crises - both personal and political - that still fire his work.

Dublin may be a brasher city than of yore, jammed tight with traffic and frantic shoppers, but the old courtesy still clings to Seamus Heaney, standing in the sunlit kitchen of his house poised on a sweep of beach at the city's Sandymount Strand. He hands me a cup of tea, with the milk placed in a small jug next to it. Then he looks at the plate beside the cup, and notes its uncomfortable blankness.

'Would you like some … bread?' Heaney asks, tentatively. I tell him that I have already eaten. 'A monastic biscuit then!' he says, and goes off to dig out the tin of digestives from the cupboard. It is, perhaps, the casual exactness of that word 'monastic' that might betray Heaney's profession to one who didn't know.

But then almost no one can be unaware, either, of Heaney's profession, or his stature within it. Irish wags refer to him as 'Famous Seamus' in a sly but proud acknowledgement of his international celebrity, crowned with his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

Although Heaney was born into a Catholic, nationalist family in Northern Ireland - and once objected to inclusion in a book of British poets with the warning lines: 'Be advised, my passport's green/ No glass of ours was ever raised/ To toast the Queen' - British readers can't get enough of him: it is an oft-cited statistic that his books account for two-thirds of the sales of living poets in Britain.

All that might be expected, perhaps, to puff a man up and render him a little prickly with self-importance. With Heaney, quite the opposite has occurred: he only rests easy in the gentle understatement of his achievement. That derives, I think, from the small, superstitious voice that echoes within the Northern Irish psyche, greeting success with the words: 'Be grateful: don't get cocky and blow it.'

The word 'lucky' thus chimes like a tiny warning-bell throughout his descriptions of past successes, be they his First Class honours degree from Queen's University, Belfast, or the rapturous critical reception for his debut book of poems, Death of a Naturalist, in 1966. And yet it is evident that Heaney has been a powerhouse of literary labour throughout, regularly turning out poems and translations, essays and lectures, taking up professorships at Harvard and Oxford, and winning the Whitbread Prize twice.

I am reminded of that old quote from the movie mogul Sam Goldwyn: 'The harder I work, the luckier I get.'
  • Click the hyperlink title above to read the full interview...
Hyperlink in this post is to;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jh ... heaney.xml

Seamus Heaney: The Road To Derry...

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 4:21 am
by Louis P. Burns aka Lugh


This is a superb new media (film) interpretation of the poem. I will go further and say; it's bang-on-time for the world of new media artists, producers, writers and the invaluable skills they can bring to the world in general. The poem itself remains etched in the traumatised minds of Derry folk and in doing so gives us focus and a committment to ensure we never endure anything like this again. I believe Seamus Heaney has done us all a great service in the poem; The Road to Derry...

Nice one -
Seamus Heaney and Raw Nerve Films - Sensitize © salute you...

Hyperlinks in this post are to;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLMlY56sahI
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/seamusheaney
http://www.nerve-centre.org.uk/rawnerve/

A life of rhyme: Seamus Heaney interviewed by Robert McCrum.

Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 9:57 am
by Louis P. Burns aka Lugh
A life of rhyme: Seamus Heaney interviewed by Robert McCrum.
From The Observer on The Guardian website. Sunday 19th July, 2009.
The Observer: Sunday 19th July, 2009. wrote:He's Ireland's greatest living writer and its first Nobel prize-winning poet since Yeats. As "Famous" Seamus Heaney turns 70, he talks to Robert McCrum about celebrity, surviving a stroke and drinking poteen with Ted Hughes.
The Observer: Sunday 19th July, 2009. wrote:Seamus Heaney is taking a taxi from his home in Sandymount, which overlooks the bright grey waters of Dublin Bay, to the centre of town. Our driver is silent, but bursting with respect. When the poet compliments him on the ingenuity of his route through the lunchtime traffic, the cabbie exclaims, with a sudden loss of discretion, "Only the best now for Ireland's favourite son."
Click here to read the full interview on The Guardian website

Sensitize © wish to thank Aine MacAodha for linking Louis P. Burns aka Lugh to this interview via Facebook.

Hyperlinks in this post is to:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/ju ... -interview
memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=670
memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=5

Seamus Heaney could be a winner of the Forward Prize for Poe

Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2010 9:00 pm
by Louis P. Burns aka Lugh
Seamus Heaney could be a winner of the Forward Prize for Poetry.
pottyaboutpoetry.com via BBC News wrote:Seamus Heaney has been shortlisted for a £10,000 poetry prize.

Heaney has been chosen for best collection with Human Chain and will be up against previous winners, Robin Robertson and Jo Shapcott.

Also in the running fot the Foward Prize for Poetry will be Lachlan Mackinnon, Sinead Morrissey and Fiona Simpson.
Read the full article on the source link sited here:- http://www.pottyaboutpoetry.com/news/he ... try-prize/

Great to see Seamus Heaney winning any and all awards for his poetry. I see a few other familiar names in that article from my time on the doomed MSN ThePleasuredome,a home for writer (now defunct): Dreadlockalien being one and Felix Dennis another, although the latter is giving an award. Take a read through my older posts here on Sensitize © about the clowns who ran the Dome site and its sister site; w w w.dome2.com- They were infested by admin fools, fraudsters and wannabe-therapists...