0:00:02 > 0:00:04The islands lie like stepping stones
0:00:04 > 0:00:07in the long river of our past.
0:00:07 > 0:00:10As soon as he starts to talk,
0:00:10 > 0:00:12To come back to your question,
0:00:12 > 0:00:15A completely successful love act
0:00:15 > 0:00:20He's an absolutely wonderful communicator. He has a true touch.
0:00:27 > 0:00:30It's important to realise Seamus Heaney understands television.
0:00:40 > 0:00:43border counties is recorded
0:00:43 > 0:00:47as sharp and accurate and green
0:00:53 > 0:00:56or he'll say, "I need a dram now."
0:00:56 > 0:00:59I believed, at that minute, and I have never ceased believing,
0:00:59 > 0:01:02something new was possible, something better could happen.
0:01:02 > 0:01:06I think the vast television
0:01:06 > 0:01:10is something that could keep the poems wonderfully alive,
0:01:10 > 0:01:13for many generations to come.
0:01:13 > 0:01:15It means once in a lifetime
0:01:15 > 0:01:21and hope and history rhyme.
0:01:42 > 0:01:46Seamus Heaney has expressed himself
0:01:49 > 0:01:53As he turns 70, this programme will explore how he has used television
0:01:53 > 0:01:57to speak to the public, and how the medium has portrayed him.
0:01:57 > 0:02:02This rich and unique archive reveals the man behind the poetry.
0:02:04 > 0:02:08A few years ago, the bishop whose diocese extends to the water here,
0:02:08 > 0:02:11made a ruling that there was to be
0:02:11 > 0:02:15and, indeed, he even forbade people
0:02:25 > 0:02:27on a bright, sunny morning like this,
0:02:27 > 0:02:32and I knew then that something
0:02:35 > 0:02:38Seamus Heaney, a little-known poet,
0:02:38 > 0:02:43films a television programme
0:02:43 > 0:02:47and one of the first times that a writer from Northern Ireland
0:02:47 > 0:02:49and present a TV programme.
0:02:49 > 0:02:53For Heaney, this was just the start of many appearances on our screens,
0:02:53 > 0:02:56which would span the next 40 years.
0:02:56 > 0:03:05I discovered no man is an island, in a sense, when I discovered love.
0:03:37 > 0:03:40this self possession and independence
0:03:40 > 0:03:43and trust in another person.
0:03:47 > 0:03:50I come from Scotland, where men didn't talk about their emotions,
0:03:50 > 0:03:53and here he was doing something
0:03:58 > 0:04:03Producers at the BBC in Belfast knew Heaney was a great communicator
0:04:18 > 0:04:20coming from the Irish word, "bog"
0:04:22 > 0:04:27Cameraman Rex Maidment worked with Heaney on three schools programmes,
0:04:34 > 0:04:36like that piece to camera -
0:04:39 > 0:04:44the imagery he conjures up.
0:04:48 > 0:04:54..was a gentler operation, a hand to hand encounter between man and earth.
0:04:54 > 0:04:58The dark wound of a turf bank or the study form of a turf stack
0:04:58 > 0:05:01were almost natural works of art.
0:05:14 > 0:05:15is just like a poem, isn't it?
0:05:15 > 0:05:18Amazing when I listen to it again.
0:05:21 > 0:05:24but he had a set idea in his head.
0:05:24 > 0:05:27Most people have to go away
0:05:27 > 0:05:32But Seamus, I think he just glanced at the general idea
0:05:34 > 0:05:37Country people became so identified
0:05:37 > 0:05:40started to call them by its name,
0:05:40 > 0:05:43call them bogtrotters and bogmen,
0:05:43 > 0:05:46and they even said that you could
0:06:01 > 0:06:11and when we finished we came back.
0:06:11 > 0:06:13In those days, it was more relaxed.
0:06:15 > 0:06:17You want any more tea, fellas?
0:06:20 > 0:06:26I remember this. This, again, is in West Donegal, near Lettermacaward,
0:06:27 > 0:06:43who used to run the bar, where
0:06:43 > 0:06:48In these programmes, Heaney explained to school children
0:06:48 > 0:06:55of the place they were living in.
0:06:55 > 0:06:58between Catholics and Protestants.
0:06:58 > 0:07:00However, broadcasters in London
0:07:00 > 0:07:04wanted Heaney to explain something
0:07:08 > 0:07:14There was a great avalanche of Heaney film documentary,
0:07:19 > 0:07:23in the rest of the British Isles.
0:07:25 > 0:07:31was on ITV at, my guess is, probably immediately after News at Ten,
0:07:32 > 0:07:34That was a good slot to have.
0:07:34 > 0:07:38Even cultural programmes on ITV had a chance of making an impact.
0:07:38 > 0:07:41a young TV producer from Belfast
0:07:43 > 0:07:47He felt a poet might be able
0:07:47 > 0:07:51in a way never seen on TV before.
0:07:54 > 0:07:58There was a good position, where we could see the whole of Belfast,
0:07:58 > 0:08:00and the shipyard laid out behind,
0:08:00 > 0:08:04and it seemed to me a good place
0:08:04 > 0:08:09quote, situation, end quotes.
0:08:10 > 0:08:14and Seamus came off with this.
0:08:14 > 0:08:19Whatever's wrong in Northern Ireland, and whatever its origins and history,
0:08:20 > 0:08:23the ugliness of the extreme
0:08:25 > 0:08:30and the very real injustices that civil rights people have been
0:08:33 > 0:08:37is more like a polluted atmosphere that people are breathing in,
0:08:37 > 0:08:42rather than an ugly townscape
0:08:42 > 0:08:47It shrivels people's trust and grows a shell on their generosity,
0:08:47 > 0:08:52and makes them very alert for the mote in the eye of their brother.
0:08:52 > 0:08:55We're a society, if you like, that has fallen from grace.
0:09:04 > 0:09:10straight out of his head then.
0:09:10 > 0:09:12But it wasn't pre-arranged,
0:09:12 > 0:09:20situation, that was a poet speaking.
0:09:20 > 0:09:38you might see your neighbours
0:09:38 > 0:09:42Did he feel that he'd been too political or not political enough?
0:09:45 > 0:09:52"I want to do that bit again,"
0:09:52 > 0:09:54Or that he was in any way worried.
0:09:54 > 0:10:02In the cool of the evening,
0:10:06 > 0:10:16You are wondering if we heightened what Seamus was saying there
0:10:19 > 0:10:23I suppose by a bit of fast cutting
0:10:32 > 0:10:37He didn't say that was in any way
0:10:39 > 0:10:41However, Heaney was careful to show
0:10:41 > 0:10:44that although coming from one side
0:10:44 > 0:10:47BOTH the entrenched positions.
0:10:47 > 0:10:52Whether it's ignorant vituperation
0:10:52 > 0:10:57or the insulated and heroic boasting that has passed for politics,
0:10:59 > 0:11:03spectator and participant share a similar sense of deja vu.
0:11:03 > 0:11:07the effect of their actions.
0:11:07 > 0:11:09I think he was quite precise
0:11:17 > 0:11:19you're sitting in your house
0:11:19 > 0:11:21and, literally, the windows rattle,
0:11:29 > 0:11:32to reveal more of his own politics,
0:11:37 > 0:11:40There are two or three poems I had written long before this began
0:11:40 > 0:11:46that I think are probably as relevant
0:11:47 > 0:11:52and in some way they define people like me within Ireland.
0:11:54 > 0:12:00the Croppies, who are, um...
0:12:09 > 0:12:13in County Wexford, famous in song and story, and they were mowed down.
0:12:29 > 0:12:31And stampede cattle into infantry
0:12:31 > 0:12:35Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown
0:13:24 > 0:13:28been burst apart since then,
0:13:28 > 0:13:35with the explosions and the emergence of the provisionals and so on.
0:13:40 > 0:13:45Seamus always treated these things with the complexity they deserved.
0:13:45 > 0:13:49And he was not willing to be drawn into the black and white arguments.
0:14:00 > 0:14:03But he could still surprise audiences with his raw language
0:14:07 > 0:14:12the sump of the northern soul,
0:14:12 > 0:14:17both Protestant and Catholic, should be drained in public.
0:14:17 > 0:14:21And that it was up to the writers to let out their dirt in some way.
0:14:21 > 0:14:29When Heaney said at the end of Quiet Word that the sump had been drained,
0:14:29 > 0:14:36he was trying to put a more optimistic view on the situation.
0:14:36 > 0:14:42And I think we all wanted...
0:14:55 > 0:14:56I think they're exhausted now.
0:14:59 > 0:15:02Generally. I think the common mind,
0:15:02 > 0:15:06whatever you want to call it,
0:15:23 > 0:15:28That would be as close to that condition I would approach, I think!
0:15:31 > 0:15:33I know, hearing him say it,
0:15:40 > 0:15:45As it so happened, the sump still had quite a lot left in it.
0:15:58 > 0:16:02Seamus Heaney became a household name throughout Britain and Ireland
0:16:02 > 0:16:05and his poetry was a fixture
0:16:05 > 0:16:11To some people, he had become
0:16:11 > 0:16:23I had gone over to interview Seamus,
0:16:23 > 0:16:28I'd scarcely done it before.
0:16:53 > 0:16:56The car has vanished out of
0:16:57 > 0:17:04the millionth of a flicker.
0:17:11 > 0:17:14It's in north Antrim, on the road.
0:17:22 > 0:17:24And you're out the other side.
0:17:24 > 0:17:29I've always found something
0:17:44 > 0:17:47They're in a parallel line.
0:17:47 > 0:17:51Just like he's a very good prose
0:17:51 > 0:17:55Norman Mailer communicated extremely well, in a different style.
0:17:55 > 0:17:58But I can't think of anyone who told it as it was for them,
0:18:01 > 0:18:04The poem just tries to catch
0:18:04 > 0:18:10or a rabbit skimming through a thing.
0:18:10 > 0:18:13There are still benighted souls
0:18:13 > 0:18:18who think being on television,
0:18:21 > 0:18:25May they wander away in peace.
0:18:25 > 0:18:28But Seamus Heaney takes it on.
0:18:31 > 0:18:35You get a lot of fussing from some people, but not with Seamus Heaney.
0:18:37 > 0:18:40even when things don't go smoothly,
0:18:40 > 0:18:43when he gave his first interview
0:18:50 > 0:18:52Seamus Heaney was finally tempted
0:18:54 > 0:18:57for the Field Day Theatre Company,
0:19:12 > 0:19:15I was thrown into that interview
0:19:17 > 0:19:21And I wouldn't do it again. I've always felt bad about it.
0:19:21 > 0:19:22I've never watched it since.
0:19:22 > 0:19:35'What attracted you to that story?
0:19:35 > 0:20:19But when I got there, suddenly it's, "Oh, well, you do it. You're on.
0:20:23 > 0:20:25and in the theatre of public life,
0:20:25 > 0:20:27So when The Cure At Troy came out,
0:20:27 > 0:20:30even though I knew nothing about it when I did the interview,
0:20:30 > 0:20:32I knew when I saw the play,
0:20:32 > 0:20:35cos I went to the opening night
0:20:35 > 0:20:37I thought, "There's something
0:20:37 > 0:20:41A lot of it was in the chorus, and
0:20:50 > 0:20:54there were references to the policeman's widow collapsing
0:20:55 > 0:20:56and when that was happening,
0:20:56 > 0:21:00I could detect in the audience sharp intakes of breath, you know?
0:21:00 > 0:21:04it wasn't popular nor profitable
0:21:10 > 0:21:13it's a way of working out -
0:21:13 > 0:21:16in a salubrious and a helpful way -
0:21:18 > 0:21:20but it's like an experiment,
0:21:20 > 0:21:26And I often consider that the low-point in my professional career.
0:21:26 > 0:21:29Fortunately, in later years, I've had many opportunities
0:21:29 > 0:21:34properly, and professionally,
0:21:36 > 0:21:39in the snugs of public houses.
0:21:40 > 0:21:45the words of The Cure At Troy resonated through television news.
0:21:54 > 0:21:59In his final speech, he quoted poet Seamus Heaney, whom he'd met today.
0:22:01 > 0:22:04And flood tide in the heart
0:22:10 > 0:22:13Suspect too much sweet talk
0:22:21 > 0:22:25I leave half ready to believe
0:22:25 > 0:22:29That a crippled trust might walk
0:22:38 > 0:22:41had a hand-written copy of it
0:22:43 > 0:22:57The lines have entered the lexicon, hope and history and all of that.
0:22:57 > 0:23:01and I think they helped describe a feeling, or an aspiration,
0:23:01 > 0:23:04more and more people share.
0:23:09 > 0:23:15Heaney received global recognition
0:23:15 > 0:23:19reserved for sporting heroes.
0:23:19 > 0:23:40Ireland's newest Nobel Laureate
0:23:40 > 0:23:42I think my life will be changed
0:23:42 > 0:23:45because of people like yourself interviewing me for a good while!
0:23:50 > 0:23:53paraphernalia around Seamus,
0:23:53 > 0:23:56he hasn't 50 people booking
0:23:58 > 0:24:02He just is there, in his big tweed jacket, and he wouldn't,
0:24:02 > 0:24:07do the conveyor belt of interviews
0:24:07 > 0:24:09because that's not what he's about,
0:24:11 > 0:24:13wham, bam, thank you, ma'am.
0:24:13 > 0:24:16I'm sure he realised, handy enough,
0:24:16 > 0:24:19in the media scramble that ensued,
0:24:19 > 0:24:23absolutely, that things weren't
0:24:23 > 0:24:27that he was going to have to put up with more intrusion into the life,
0:24:27 > 0:24:30that there were going to be greater demands made on his time,
0:24:30 > 0:24:34that if those demands were all met
0:24:44 > 0:24:47Northern Ireland was in upheaval.
0:24:50 > 0:24:53he revisited the same landscape
0:24:55 > 0:24:58Neil Martin co-produced the film.
0:24:58 > 0:25:00Something To Write Home About
0:25:00 > 0:25:04or essay, that Seamus wrote.
0:25:04 > 0:25:06The Sluggan was the working title,
0:25:09 > 0:25:12and maybe divided parishes,
0:25:14 > 0:25:16This was called The Sluggan,
0:25:16 > 0:25:21first of all, two townlands.
0:25:24 > 0:25:28It divided the townland of Tamnearn
0:25:35 > 0:25:37and the parish of Newbridge.
0:25:37 > 0:25:42I grew up between the predominantly loyalist and Protestant village
0:25:42 > 0:25:46and the predominantly nationalist and Catholic district of Bellaghy,
0:25:46 > 0:25:50between the railway and the road.
0:25:57 > 0:26:01On a border between townlands
0:26:01 > 0:26:06Sometimes none of us actually fit absolutely in one camp or the other.
0:26:06 > 0:26:14I used to move my loyalties across from Bellaghy to Castledawson.
0:26:14 > 0:26:26I was moving across the division
0:26:28 > 0:26:31this field belonged to so and so,
0:26:38 > 0:26:50And, "How are you getting on?"
0:26:50 > 0:27:00They're living in a kind of shell, a kind of hiatus, or limbo.
0:27:00 > 0:27:03the responsibility, and the strain,
0:27:03 > 0:27:07and the pain of changing their way of thinking and feeling and living.
0:27:07 > 0:27:11people themselves must change.
0:27:15 > 0:27:19of old sectarian allegiances
0:27:19 > 0:27:21had been only an aspiration.
0:27:25 > 0:27:30It seems to me that as a symbol of the reality of our lives,
0:27:30 > 0:27:34the March drain is a better one
0:27:36 > 0:27:42Marching season is O'Neil and Essex on either side of the river.
0:27:45 > 0:27:49of our experience embittered.
0:27:49 > 0:27:53The March drain seems to me
0:28:00 > 0:28:05In 1999, as Northern Ireland
0:28:05 > 0:28:09the poet to explain politics.
0:28:09 > 0:28:12Do you think this is a moment
0:28:20 > 0:28:22where everybody has arrived together.
0:28:22 > 0:28:26Whether you're DUP, Sinn Fein, SDLP,
0:28:26 > 0:28:29whether you think of yourself
0:28:32 > 0:28:36the story, somehow, has become one story in the last while.
0:28:36 > 0:28:39What I really admire about Seamus
0:28:39 > 0:28:44is you get the sense that he broods.
0:28:44 > 0:28:49a kind of dour man at all, at all.
0:28:52 > 0:28:56In that way, I think of him as a really old-fashioned intellectual.
0:28:56 > 0:28:58But he wears that intellect
0:29:00 > 0:29:03But the time of his 60th birthday,
0:29:03 > 0:29:08television wanted to elevate Famous Seamus into the realms of celebrity.
0:29:16 > 0:29:20and joy and laughter and thinking new thoughts to so many of us.
0:29:20 > 0:29:24It's an eternal voice that he has.
0:29:24 > 0:29:27I wish I were there to give you
0:29:32 > 0:29:48Seamus and myself went for lunch in Dublin, and I remember...
0:29:48 > 0:30:00And I know the thoughts that were coursing through my mind.
0:30:00 > 0:30:05and that's one of the expenses of being a global figure, I guess.
0:30:05 > 0:30:09In the past decade, Heaney has shunned the role of celebrity.
0:30:09 > 0:30:17granted to high-profile journalists.
0:30:17 > 0:30:21Heaney discussed his reworking
0:30:21 > 0:30:26In your version, it's Antigone
0:30:34 > 0:30:37George Bush practically said these very words. I know, yes.
0:30:37 > 0:30:41Well, the pressure from the world from the Bush administration
0:30:41 > 0:30:43was the surrounding reality.
0:30:47 > 0:30:51the very words caused anxiety,
0:30:51 > 0:30:54Because you can't have war on terror.
0:30:54 > 0:30:57If I meet him, he says, "Oh, I saw Newsnight the other night."
0:31:03 > 0:31:08He doesn't seek to tell you that he knows everything about politically
0:31:15 > 0:31:20the tallest towers be overturned,
0:31:20 > 0:31:25those in high places, daunted, those overlooked, regarded.
0:31:30 > 0:31:34or your anger at this trauma,
0:31:34 > 0:31:38Well, I spent 14 years coming
0:31:38 > 0:31:44I felt implicated in some way when the Twin Towers thing happened.
0:31:47 > 0:31:53but a realisation that retaliation
0:31:53 > 0:31:58and just a sense that the world was going to be disturbed in a big way.
0:31:58 > 0:31:59I felt it much more strongly
0:32:05 > 0:32:08that he felt "very acutely"
0:32:08 > 0:32:10what was happening in America,
0:32:10 > 0:32:13more so even than he had felt about Northern Ireland in all those years.
0:32:13 > 0:32:17Perhaps because what was happening in Northern Ireland was in his bones
0:32:18 > 0:32:22and he'd try and make sense of that for a very long time.
0:32:22 > 0:32:24But now he had a broader canvas
0:32:36 > 0:32:41his personal feelings with us
0:32:41 > 0:32:43Global events and family life
0:32:46 > 0:33:06new collection about your father
0:33:06 > 0:33:12and distance in our relation,
0:33:14 > 0:33:18he was almost always an archetype to me, rather than a parent,
0:33:34 > 0:33:40Well, the sayings were few therefore
0:33:40 > 0:33:42The way he corrects himself,
0:33:42 > 0:33:49again, that he thought of him as an archetype, and I said "the sayings".
0:33:49 > 0:33:53he talked about his father,
0:33:53 > 0:33:57because the first poem of his that I read was Death Of A Naturalist,
0:33:59 > 0:34:02Seamus Heaney from that poem.
0:34:02 > 0:34:07in the film we made, about, what...
0:34:09 > 0:34:13was a very satisfying circle
0:34:13 > 0:34:17I would always be very leery
0:34:17 > 0:34:23if they themselves had not been reasonably explicit about it.
0:34:28 > 0:34:32in The Blackbird Of Glanmore.
0:34:35 > 0:34:42and I always remember him kind of rolling over with delight, you know,
0:34:42 > 0:34:44as an infant, really, almost.
0:34:44 > 0:34:49I thought, for him, he'd obviously come to a point in his life
0:34:52 > 0:34:56that idea that he would see his brother turning over, dancing,
0:34:56 > 0:35:00was an image that had almost
0:35:00 > 0:35:02the older that he was getting.
0:35:02 > 0:35:06There's a phrase in the poem,
0:35:06 > 0:35:08That more than anything else
0:35:08 > 0:35:14orphaned quality in my mind.
0:35:14 > 0:35:18I hate to described him as a kind of a wise uncle, but he's a wise man.
0:35:18 > 0:35:22And I think we should try and extract the wisdom from wise people,
0:35:22 > 0:35:23you know, while we have them.
0:35:29 > 0:35:32Television is a lie detector,
0:35:35 > 0:35:38is that the man is speaking
0:35:41 > 0:35:43and people just trust that.
0:35:43 > 0:35:45That archive is incredibly important
0:35:52 > 0:35:57found is that it is a way of talking to the greatest number of people.
0:35:59 > 0:36:03and when he's digging with his pen,
0:36:06 > 0:36:10because the inner place of dreams
0:36:10 > 0:36:12where all Seamus's creativity
0:36:12 > 0:36:16where part of that is shared,
0:37:02 > 0:37:05cool hardness in our hands.
0:37:15 > 0:37:17Than any other man on Toner's bog.
0:37:20 > 0:37:23Corked sloppily with paper.
0:37:26 > 0:37:30Nicking and slicing neatly,
0:37:32 > 0:37:35For the good turf. Digging.
0:37:48 > 0:37:52Between my finger and my thumb
0:37:59 > 0:38:02Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:38:02 > 0:38:05E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk