Seamus Heaney has died at the age of 74. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.
It's funny how there seems to be pattens in life. Last week I picked up Seamus Heaney's 'New Selected Poems 1966-1987' and read more of him then I have ever done and now he can no longer write poetry. Heaney is a poet who is on my radar but always at a distance. I used to have a signed copy of 'Human Chain' and I've got 'Station Island' on my shelf but I've never really understood him and I could never tell if I liked him or if he really was any good. The first time I encounted Heaney was at Secondary School and we read 'Blackberry Picking'. I read it again last week and I remembered that what I liked about it was the concrete sensations he's able to bring with some degree of vividness.
I don't know much about his life outside of poetry, and I'm not sure there is much more for whom poetry was his bread and butter, apart from the criticism he wrote. In some ways I'm not really interested in a poet's personal life as I am interested in their poetry. So in light of that I will set down to read the New Selected for next week as it will give a broader look into his work over the years. It will be interesting to see how his poetry develops over the years and how he will either enlarge his themes or distill his experience.
He has given me, in his poem 'Relic of Memory', the title of a story I'm working on about meteorites, which will be called 'Sudden Birth' and for that I am thankful.
Relic of Memory
The lough waters
Can petrify wood:
Old oars and posts
Over the years
Harden their grain,
Incarcerate ghosts
Of sap and season.
The shallows lap
And give and take:
Constant ablutions,
Such drowning love
Stun a stake
To stalagmite.
Dead lava,
The cooling star
Or sudden birth
Of burnt meteor
Are too simple,
Without the lure
That relic stored-
A piece of stone
On the shelf at school,
Oatmeal coloured
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