Hearing Heaney: The Sixth Seamus Heaney Lectures

The impact of Seamus Heaney on the cultural landscape has been profound and far-reaching. His sure-footed voice has been an important record of our time and place, a tuning-fork sending back signals from the place where language meets pure ideas. ‘Hearing Heaney’ is a collection of responses to Heaney’s vision and clarity of thought, expression and ideals. Asked to provide readings of Heaney’s work, which involved for many a personal reflection on its impact on their work or life, this collection includes contributions from a diverse range of backgrounds: journalists, fellow poets and academics. These diverse essays provide the reader with a fascinating series of lenses through which to view the achievement of Heaney’s work and its lasting impact on the world of language and art. CONTENTS: Seamus Heaney, Foreword; Pauric Travers, The Seamus Heaney Lecture series: beginnings; Carla King, Of bogs, bodies and sagas; Harry Clifton, Reluctant amoralist: Seamus Heaney’s physical world; Vona Groarke, Between the lines: the writer’s Heaney; Olivia O'Leary, Seamus Heaney: part of what we are; Pauric Travers, Crossing borders: Heaney and the ‘Ulster Thing’; Yxta Maya Murray, Punishment and the costs of knowledge; Michael Cronin, Ireland’s fractal futures: Heaney, translation and mobility; Regina Murphy, Learning from Heaney: the poet and arts based educational research; Eugene McNulty, Words into action: re-hearing Antigone’s claim.