“Listen, Now, Again” Bank of Ireland Cultural and Heritage Centre, College Green
Dublin, 4 July 2018
Tá áthas orm a bheith anseo libh inniu ar an ócáid thábhachtach, spreagúil seo.
This exhibition gives us an opportunity to celebrate a great legacy.
Here, through Seamus’ manuscripts, annotations and unpublished works we see what Catherine Heaney described recently as ‘the lifecycle’ of some of Seamus’ poems – receiving a privileged view of the demands that producing a poem places on the author – the constant amending and revising necessary, as was the case with Seamus Heaney, as the gifted writer transforms words into what will become masterpieces.
The finished poem, and it is never finished for it lives again in every reading, emerges through a process of distillation. It is in a space between intellect and intimacy that the poetic craft is conducted. From the regular and irregular fall on the anvil of words, the poem might emerge in never finished shape.
Beyond the poetic instinct there is the preparation for a life of crafting, reading, comparison, incorporation of method, and disciplined line and selection from a universe of themes informed by lived life and imagination.
This exhibition shows all of this – the importance of the grounding in classical themes that Seamus Heaney had, the discipline to fashion a comparative knowledge of myth, the rigours of method, and the flight beyond all of which informed the twelve volumes of poetry.
But the formation of the poet is also evidenced in the critical essays of Seamus Heaney. They are of immense value; making a bridge as they do from the inherited achievements of literary scholarship to new critical readings. New soil has been turned in these essays for the planting of ripened seeds for new seasons.
In both poems and essays there is the echo of that most fundamental contradiction of finite life and infinite imagination. The huge respect that Seamus had for nature’s capacity for renewal and healing that resolves such a contradiction that encouraged his use of words and attempt at unravelling their meaning and impact, to seek a poetic resolution of that contradiction.
In Seamus Heaney’s poetry, critical essays and delivered lectures we identify sources for a legacy of work that will bloom again and again in different settings and differing circumstances. All of the work offers glimpses of the rare beauty that a superb poet caught in achieving a symmetry of the life, the lifetime and the word.
As Seamus himself once put it:
“Every now and again, you write a poem that gives you self-respect and steadies your going a little bit farther out in the stream. At the same time, you have to conjure the next stepping stone because the stream, we hope, keeps flowing."
Poetry never trades in certainties. Indeed, the future Nobel laureate produced his first work under the pseudonym ‘Incertus’ meaning ‘uncertain’. It was an uncertainty that gave birth to an outstanding body of work by a poet and critic and teacher who will go down in history as one of the greatest writing talents of the twentieth century.
It was also an uncertainty that saw Seamus inspire as much affection as awe in his native Ireland. When he left us, so suddenly, in the Summer of 2013, the genuine sorrow at his passing, which extended far beyond the literary world, and even brought Croke Park to its feet in homage was a remarkable tribute to a man who wore the cloak of international recognition as poet and scholar lightly and whose empathy, concern and generosity was revealed again and again in a diversity of settings, meetings, encounters, and above all, friendships.
We are so very fortunate that Seamus greatly desired that his literary archive would remain here in Ireland. It is moving and poignant to reflect on the fact that it was Seamus himself who transported that rich, valuable and profoundly important archive to the National Library in his own car.
Some weeks ago I had the great pleasure of visiting the Seamus Heaney HomePlace in Bellaghy. I spoke on that occasion of how that place of re-imagination and regeneration echoed with the spirit of Seamus – the photographs, the books, the notes and personal artefacts adding so much texture to our treasured memory of the man and the poet.
Seamus once said that
“The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself.”
It was that soaring above the everyday, that creation of sceneries and landscapes of new truths and heightened awareness that makes the title of this exhibition - “Listen, Now, Again” – so apt.
It is a title that comes from the final line of Seamus’ poem ‘The Rainstick’ and one that speaks of his appreciation as source of light and hope in the exceptional transformative capacity of wonder, of recognition of the hidden extraordinary in the familiar, urges us to hear ‘the music that we never would have known to listen for’, and enables us to experience our world in new and often illuminating ways.
The exhibition has been described as an ‘immersive and intimate experience’, and there can be no doubt that it is a remarkable and valuable portal into the world of Seamus Heaney, his family, and the influences that were to shape and craft some of the greatest poems of twentieth century Ireland.
As we travel across the room we are forced to view Seamus’ words through different prisms and from alternate angles, constantly seeing the new in the old, the unfamiliar in the familiar.
We are also invited into the quiet and profound spaces and intimacies that defined Seamus the man so many of us had the pleasure of knowing; Seamus who placed a huge value on friendship, as the carefully designed Christmas cards to an ever growing list of friends attests; who wrote in his diary of the everyday events of family life; who kept for decades a crayoned drawing by a long ago pupil to whom he told wonderful stories.
This has been a most sensitively curated and beautifully designed exhibition that allows us to experience the world of Seamus in all its richness, the farmer’s son, the Bellaghy native, the emerging poet, the well loved teacher, the Nobel Laureate, the good friend, the husband and father, the unassuming yet multi-faceted man, and to witness them come together to create the poetic genius that was Seamus Heaney.
May I commend all those who have brought together this remarkable event, for it truly is remarkable. I would like to commend the vision of the partners on this exhibition, the National Library of Ireland, Bank of Ireland and the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. May I also mention in particular Professor Geraldine Higgins, Dr. Sandra Collins, and Katherine McSharry who have contributed so much expertise, hard work and imagination to the design and content of the exhibition.
May I also thank, as always, Marie, Michael, Christopher and Catherine-Ann who continue to share the legacy of Seamus, so generously, with his many readers, admirers and friends here in Ireland and across the world.
Míle buíochas, is beir beannacht. Thank you.