Seamus Heaney, a poet for us all

An earlier post reference to Heaney Note: Since visiting Derry, his words, his life, his courage stir me in ways I could never have anticipated.

Seamus Heaney, poet, died on August 30, 2013 in Dublin, Ireland. He will be buried in County Derry in Northern Ireland. He is quintessential Irish.

It doesn’t matter how you come to know a poet, what is important is that you do. The words are as important as is the life story. Poets often are not celebrities, but some become the voice of an age simply by doing what they do best.

I first heard of Seamus Heaney at an Irish Poetry event at Slainte in White Rock, BC last March. I was unfamiliar with his work. We have so few poetry events in my area and so much to learn about poetry. Our house guest – an Englishman who lives and teaches in Japan, said Heaney was one of his favorite poets. He even bought us an anthology of his work called Opened Ground.

The event was crowded and Heaney was highly regarded, particularly by those with Northern Irish connections. There were many anecdotes as well as readings of his poems. Digging stood out for me. Here is a link to hear Heaney reading this poem. I love hearing how his voice gently wraps around the words. In the first stanza there is the contrast of holding his pen “snug as a gun” to his father who holds, like his father before him, holds his spade and the practice of years of digging.

Heaney was born on a farm near Derry. His calling was poetry – a centuries old highly regarded role in Ireland, yet a totally different lifestyle from farming. He grew up in the time of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. The brilliance of his words and insights over time is a legacy that transcends a culture full of strife and partition. No wonder he questioned the pen “snug as a gun”. It correlates with the idea of pen mightier than a sword. And it shows courage, as he found his voice though adversity.

He could have chosen to stay at home and be a farmer.

Through his studies at Queens University he recalled, “I learned that my local County Derry [childhood] experience, which I had considered archaic and irrelevant to ‘the modern world’ was to be trusted.

At the end of the poem Digging he seems to reconcile both worlds by saying:

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests

I’ll dig with it.

His steadfast digging led him to many honors including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 “for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.” Although he is highly regarded by academics, critics and even politicians, his style remained accessible to the common reader. If you are unfamiliar with his work, please read his words and learn the power of poetry.

He has been called the most famous Irish poet since Yeats. When I see the profound reverence for the legacy of poetry in Ireland springing from a powerful oral tradition that continues to shape the Irish psyche over centuries my wish is this:

Seamus Heaney, may you gently rest in the soil of your ancestors.

May you not be the final greatest poet.

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Here is a later addition sent by a friend of a piece in the New York Times that goes more in depth with his writing and worth reading:

Capturing Rhythms of Nature in Poems