Joe Praml created, compiled, directed and was one of three readers of Keeping Going: The Poetry of Seamus Heaney, a one-hour radio program broadcast on KPFK 90.7 FM Radio Los Angeles on August 24, 2014. Joe wrote this introduction about Seamus Heaney for the program.
Seamus Heaney was an Irish poet, known and loved wherever poetry is read, spoken and listened to.
He was born on April 13, 1939 in County Derry, one of the 6 counties that are part of Northern Ireland. He was the eldest of nine children and grew up on a small farm near Castledawson in Derry. Here is where he became aware of what would be one of the innate themes in his poetry, the living redemptive spirit of the earth itself, the land, the dirt, the bogs of his Ireland.
An intelligent and promising boy, the family saved and made certain that young Seamus would get an education, which would free him the rigors and uncertainties of living and farming in this sometimes dangerous part of Ireland.
And so began his journey to becoming one of the greatest of 20th Century poets, who many equated with the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. In 1995 Seamus Heaney joined Yeats, and fellow Irish writers George Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett, as winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature "for works" as went the citation "of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."
His academic journey began when he won a scholarship to St. Columba, a prestigious Catholic grammar school for boys in Derry. From there he went to Queen's University in Belfast to study English Language and Literature and in 1961 he graduated with a first class honors degree.
It was here, after reading the poetry of Ted Hughes, English poet and husband of the tragic American poet Sylvia Plath, that he realized his own destiny was to become a poet. His greatest influence during this time, however, was the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh. It was at Queens University that he became aware of his many other gifts, that he had the makings of a playwright, that he could teach, that he was gifted as a translator of other works of Irish into English, and later, from his fascination with the Viking influence on Ireland, he translated the Norse saga Beowulf, freeing it from the dreary prison of English lit classes and releasing it to contemporary appeal. From his modest beginnings in Derry he would bloom into a true Renaissance man of letters.
His passion to learn was equaled by his passion to pass on what he learned and he became an esteemed teacher and lecturer. He was sought by great universities such as Harvard where he taught for 9 years, at Oxford, at Trinity College in Dublin.
He was loved by his students, and by all who came in contact with him. Most times that's an empty cliché, but up to the time of his death in August 2013 there was no one to be found who'd heard a bad word about him.
During these years he published volumes of poetry that were highly received, loved and read everywhere, beginning with his break thru volume "Death of a Naturalist" in 1966, followed by Door into the Dark in 1969, Wintering Out in 1972, North in 1975, Field Work in 1977.
Awards came his way, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1968, the E.M. Forster Award in 1975, Golden Wreath of Poetry in 2001, the T.S. Eliot Award in 2006, and of course the jewel of them all, The Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995.
The true power of his poetry becomes evident when we realize that he wasn't only an Irish poet. His words and lines become universal, without nation, emerging from the ripe harvest of his ingrained Irish roots and experience, as we will hear from tonight's reading.
His education wasn't merely academic. There was another school out there, sharp-edged and invasive, Northern Ireland, his home. No matter how he tried to distance himself from the internecine war cleaving at his birthplace, this reality would not go away and kept coming back into his poetry.
Like so many others he had been touched personally by this venomous dragon, known so prosaically as "the troubles". He lost a close cousin, dying in his arms, saw many deaths lined up along strange roads at night. It was unescapable. We see this pain in two of the poems tonight, "The Strand at Lough Beg" and "Keeping Going."
Other Heaney themes were the hands, working, creating with them, the joys and the tyranny of physical labor. His poetry asks always that eternal question, the plea of Socrates about the worthlessness of the unexamined life. Who are these people, his people, this nation, where have they come from, where are they going, who are they at this moment?
He was fascinated by the early warrior Vikings, who raided, stole and then built so many monuments to the land they then peacefully settled into.
In his poetry small things, insignificant, the objects in a barn at dusk, an abandoned well, the possibility of entrance into Paradise through the music from a dried cactus stem.
Heaney was always conscious of his Irish origins. In 1982 he was included in an anthology of English poets and authors. He asked that his name be removed, that he was Irish, not British, and wrote an open letter to the publishers:
Don’t be surprised if I demur, for, be advised
My passport’s green.
No glass of ours was ever raised
to toast the Queen."
In 1965 he married Marie Devlin, his wife until the end. She is an accomplished woman in her own right, an author of books about Irish legends and myths. She also was a teacher and lecturer and like Seamus, traveled, taught and spoke at colleges and Universities. They had three children, sons Michael and Christopher and a daughter, Catherine Ann. It's said that Marie was the only woman Seamus ever knew and loved.
In 1999 his translation of the Norse Epic Beowulf appeared, followed by poetry volumes Electric Light in 2001, District and Circle in 2006, Human Chain in 2010, and collected editions of his poetry: Selected Poems 1965-75 published in 1980, New Selected Poems 1966-87, published in 1990, Opened Ground, published in 1998.
On the night of August 29, 2013, after a short illness, while leaving a restaurant in Dublin, Seamus Heaney fell to the ground. He was taken to Blackrock Clinic and the next day, on August 30, he died, giving up his great spirit to the ages. He was 74 years old.
His funeral, held in Donnybrook, Dublin on September 2, 2013, was broadcast live on Radio Teilifis Eireann, RTE, Ireland's National Television and Radio Broadcaster. RTE Radio 1 transmitted a continuous broadcast from 8:00 am to 9:15 pm on the day of the funeral. The previous day at the All-Ireland Gaelic semi-final football match a crowd of over 81 thousand people stood and applauded him for six minutes.
He was buried at his home village of Bellaghy, in the same cemetery as his parents and next to his brother Christopher, who was killed in a road accident at the age of four while Seamus was away at St. Columba's, and was lamented in the poem “Mid-Term Break.”
His last words were to his wife, in Latin, Noli Timere, "Don't be afraid."
He was born on April 13, 1939 in County Derry, one of the 6 counties that are part of Northern Ireland. He was the eldest of nine children and grew up on a small farm near Castledawson in Derry. Here is where he became aware of what would be one of the innate themes in his poetry, the living redemptive spirit of the earth itself, the land, the dirt, the bogs of his Ireland.
An intelligent and promising boy, the family saved and made certain that young Seamus would get an education, which would free him the rigors and uncertainties of living and farming in this sometimes dangerous part of Ireland.
And so began his journey to becoming one of the greatest of 20th Century poets, who many equated with the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. In 1995 Seamus Heaney joined Yeats, and fellow Irish writers George Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett, as winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature "for works" as went the citation "of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."
His academic journey began when he won a scholarship to St. Columba, a prestigious Catholic grammar school for boys in Derry. From there he went to Queen's University in Belfast to study English Language and Literature and in 1961 he graduated with a first class honors degree.
It was here, after reading the poetry of Ted Hughes, English poet and husband of the tragic American poet Sylvia Plath, that he realized his own destiny was to become a poet. His greatest influence during this time, however, was the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh. It was at Queens University that he became aware of his many other gifts, that he had the makings of a playwright, that he could teach, that he was gifted as a translator of other works of Irish into English, and later, from his fascination with the Viking influence on Ireland, he translated the Norse saga Beowulf, freeing it from the dreary prison of English lit classes and releasing it to contemporary appeal. From his modest beginnings in Derry he would bloom into a true Renaissance man of letters.
His passion to learn was equaled by his passion to pass on what he learned and he became an esteemed teacher and lecturer. He was sought by great universities such as Harvard where he taught for 9 years, at Oxford, at Trinity College in Dublin.
He was loved by his students, and by all who came in contact with him. Most times that's an empty cliché, but up to the time of his death in August 2013 there was no one to be found who'd heard a bad word about him.
During these years he published volumes of poetry that were highly received, loved and read everywhere, beginning with his break thru volume "Death of a Naturalist" in 1966, followed by Door into the Dark in 1969, Wintering Out in 1972, North in 1975, Field Work in 1977.
Awards came his way, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1968, the E.M. Forster Award in 1975, Golden Wreath of Poetry in 2001, the T.S. Eliot Award in 2006, and of course the jewel of them all, The Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995.
The true power of his poetry becomes evident when we realize that he wasn't only an Irish poet. His words and lines become universal, without nation, emerging from the ripe harvest of his ingrained Irish roots and experience, as we will hear from tonight's reading.
His education wasn't merely academic. There was another school out there, sharp-edged and invasive, Northern Ireland, his home. No matter how he tried to distance himself from the internecine war cleaving at his birthplace, this reality would not go away and kept coming back into his poetry.
Like so many others he had been touched personally by this venomous dragon, known so prosaically as "the troubles". He lost a close cousin, dying in his arms, saw many deaths lined up along strange roads at night. It was unescapable. We see this pain in two of the poems tonight, "The Strand at Lough Beg" and "Keeping Going."
Other Heaney themes were the hands, working, creating with them, the joys and the tyranny of physical labor. His poetry asks always that eternal question, the plea of Socrates about the worthlessness of the unexamined life. Who are these people, his people, this nation, where have they come from, where are they going, who are they at this moment?
He was fascinated by the early warrior Vikings, who raided, stole and then built so many monuments to the land they then peacefully settled into.
In his poetry small things, insignificant, the objects in a barn at dusk, an abandoned well, the possibility of entrance into Paradise through the music from a dried cactus stem.
Heaney was always conscious of his Irish origins. In 1982 he was included in an anthology of English poets and authors. He asked that his name be removed, that he was Irish, not British, and wrote an open letter to the publishers:
Don’t be surprised if I demur, for, be advised
My passport’s green.
No glass of ours was ever raised
to toast the Queen."
In 1965 he married Marie Devlin, his wife until the end. She is an accomplished woman in her own right, an author of books about Irish legends and myths. She also was a teacher and lecturer and like Seamus, traveled, taught and spoke at colleges and Universities. They had three children, sons Michael and Christopher and a daughter, Catherine Ann. It's said that Marie was the only woman Seamus ever knew and loved.
In 1999 his translation of the Norse Epic Beowulf appeared, followed by poetry volumes Electric Light in 2001, District and Circle in 2006, Human Chain in 2010, and collected editions of his poetry: Selected Poems 1965-75 published in 1980, New Selected Poems 1966-87, published in 1990, Opened Ground, published in 1998.
On the night of August 29, 2013, after a short illness, while leaving a restaurant in Dublin, Seamus Heaney fell to the ground. He was taken to Blackrock Clinic and the next day, on August 30, he died, giving up his great spirit to the ages. He was 74 years old.
His funeral, held in Donnybrook, Dublin on September 2, 2013, was broadcast live on Radio Teilifis Eireann, RTE, Ireland's National Television and Radio Broadcaster. RTE Radio 1 transmitted a continuous broadcast from 8:00 am to 9:15 pm on the day of the funeral. The previous day at the All-Ireland Gaelic semi-final football match a crowd of over 81 thousand people stood and applauded him for six minutes.
He was buried at his home village of Bellaghy, in the same cemetery as his parents and next to his brother Christopher, who was killed in a road accident at the age of four while Seamus was away at St. Columba's, and was lamented in the poem “Mid-Term Break.”
His last words were to his wife, in Latin, Noli Timere, "Don't be afraid."