0:00:12 > 0:00:14The annals say:
0:00:14 > 0:00:16When the monks of Clonmacnoise
0:00:16 > 0:00:19Were all at prayers inside the oratory
0:00:19 > 0:00:22A ship appeared above them in the air.
0:00:23 > 0:00:26The anchor dragged along behind so deep
0:00:26 > 0:00:29It hooked itself into the altar rails
0:00:29 > 0:00:33And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,
0:00:33 > 0:00:37A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
0:00:37 > 0:00:39And struggled to release it.
0:00:39 > 0:00:40But in vain.
0:00:42 > 0:00:47"This man can't bear our life here and will drown," the abbot said,
0:00:47 > 0:00:48"Unless we help him."
0:00:48 > 0:00:51So they did,
0:00:51 > 0:00:53The freed ship sailed
0:00:53 > 0:00:56And the man climbed back
0:00:56 > 0:00:59Out of the marvellous as he had known it.
0:01:05 > 0:01:07The ship comes along,
0:01:07 > 0:01:09it's in the air.
0:01:09 > 0:01:12The abbot looks up, the community look up, they see a ship in the air.
0:01:12 > 0:01:16It doesn't take a fizz out of them, according to the chronicler.
0:01:17 > 0:01:20But the crewman who comes down and goes to the edge at the bottom,
0:01:20 > 0:01:22goes back up again...
0:01:24 > 0:01:27He's a successful Orpheus, if you like.
0:01:27 > 0:01:30He goes into the Underworld, gets what he needs
0:01:30 > 0:01:33and comes up with it and sails off.
0:01:33 > 0:01:36And I suppose in so far as that is the case,
0:01:36 > 0:01:38he's a figure of the successful,
0:01:38 > 0:01:41as TS Elliot would say, "raid on the inarticulate", you know.
0:01:41 > 0:01:47Or the immersion in the other, in the visionary.
0:01:55 > 0:01:59You dwell in your dream world, in your fantasy, in your own conscience.
0:02:02 > 0:02:05And also, you dwell in the wide-awake,
0:02:05 > 0:02:08up-and-at-it world of day to day.
0:02:16 > 0:02:19If you're too deep into either one,
0:02:19 > 0:02:22you aren't living the right life.
0:02:26 > 0:02:30To write lyric poetry 12 hours a day, seven days a week,
0:02:30 > 0:02:33a whole month, whole year,
0:02:33 > 0:02:36maybe somebody could do it, but there are very few.
0:02:41 > 0:02:44I always had this notion that you earned your living
0:02:44 > 0:02:46and your poetry was a grace.
0:02:51 > 0:02:53GULLS SQUAWK
0:02:54 > 0:03:00While I'm certainly at home in north and south Ireland,
0:03:00 > 0:03:04my home in the conventional sense is in Dublin.
0:03:06 > 0:03:11The word now has been Americanised. People buy and sell homes!
0:03:11 > 0:03:15And just with the age we're in and the age I am
0:03:15 > 0:03:17and the trade I'm in with words,
0:03:17 > 0:03:22scepticism and analysis and caution have crept in around the word home.
0:03:28 > 0:03:30We came in here in 1976.
0:03:34 > 0:03:36This attic was smaller at the time.
0:03:36 > 0:03:41And it had a kind of snugness and it was up above the house, secure.
0:03:43 > 0:03:48This was where I did any writing I did for many years, up here.
0:03:49 > 0:03:55But this room has a deep kind of support system in it psychically.
0:03:58 > 0:04:01The table under the window there,
0:04:01 > 0:04:03it came from my aunt's
0:04:03 > 0:04:05and uncle's place in County Derry.
0:04:07 > 0:04:10I remember where it sat in one of those old-style kitchens,
0:04:10 > 0:04:12country kitchens, with an open fire.
0:04:12 > 0:04:16Under thatch. It was always scrubbed.
0:04:16 > 0:04:19So it belongs in a previous life
0:04:19 > 0:04:22and it's kind of talismanic, really, there.
0:04:25 > 0:04:26I don't sit staring out of it,
0:04:26 > 0:04:30but it's got a view of the shipping on the Irish Sea.
0:04:30 > 0:04:33It is quite entrancing, really.
0:04:33 > 0:04:36You don't really have to look, you just... It's there.
0:04:37 > 0:04:42There's always a ship moving or a ferry coming in or a ferry going out.
0:04:42 > 0:04:43I keep thinking of Auden's...
0:04:43 > 0:04:47Auden has a line in one of my favourite Auden poems.
0:04:47 > 0:04:49"Look, stranger, on this island now
0:04:49 > 0:04:51"The leaping light for your delight discovers."
0:04:51 > 0:04:56But, he says, "Far off like floating seeds the ships
0:04:56 > 0:04:59"Diverge upon their urgent, voluntary errands."
0:05:04 > 0:05:09I dwell in this house and in the cities
0:05:09 > 0:05:12and Heaney lives in the country
0:05:12 > 0:05:16and in his memory and elsewhere.
0:05:16 > 0:05:17BIRDSONG
0:05:17 > 0:05:19POIGNANT INSTRUMENTAL
0:05:26 > 0:05:31That part of the world, up around Mossbawn, Anahorish,
0:05:31 > 0:05:34Lagans Road, where the school was,
0:05:34 > 0:05:35I love that ground.
0:05:36 > 0:05:39And I... It's a...
0:05:39 > 0:05:42pleasure to me to go back to it.
0:05:45 > 0:05:49The word Mossbawn, to me, it had terrific,
0:05:49 > 0:05:54er...fragrance, depth, security...
0:05:54 > 0:05:56trustworthiness, nesting.
0:05:59 > 0:06:02It has changed, of course, immensely.
0:06:03 > 0:06:07It used to be a thatched house, traditional, whitewashed,
0:06:07 > 0:06:10long, what they would have called a cabin.
0:06:10 > 0:06:14With the horse in the stable at one end of the house
0:06:14 > 0:06:19and at the far end, my parents' room with the new children,
0:06:19 > 0:06:23the baby in the cot and the very baby-baby in the pram
0:06:23 > 0:06:27and three beds in the bedroom and people disposed and...
0:06:27 > 0:06:30somebody else in the cot in the kitchen in between.
0:06:40 > 0:06:44My mother was compassionate,
0:06:44 > 0:06:48religious, very empathetic.
0:06:48 > 0:06:52She had great feeling for other people's anxieties, worries.
0:06:52 > 0:06:59She induced a sense in me, I think, of obligation to others.
0:06:59 > 0:07:02My mother, for example, would say, if you're going out to a dance,
0:07:02 > 0:07:05"Don't forget to dance with the girls that aren't being danced with."
0:07:05 > 0:07:08She had that kind of care for others.
0:07:13 > 0:07:16When all the others were away at mass
0:07:16 > 0:07:19I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
0:07:19 > 0:07:23They broke the silence, let fall one by one
0:07:23 > 0:07:26Like solder weeping off the soldering iron.
0:07:28 > 0:07:32She was a strong, courageous person.
0:07:32 > 0:07:34I know that now psychologically.
0:07:34 > 0:07:38She had great stamina to survive, for example,
0:07:38 > 0:07:41nine births inside about 12 years.
0:07:41 > 0:07:43And to keep good heart,
0:07:43 > 0:07:45lack of bitterness,
0:07:45 > 0:07:48keep a kind of shine on her presence.
0:07:51 > 0:07:55I remembered her head bent towards my head,
0:07:55 > 0:07:57Her breath in mine,
0:07:57 > 0:07:59Our fluent dipping knives -
0:08:00 > 0:08:03Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
0:08:10 > 0:08:12There were two women in my life very early on.
0:08:12 > 0:08:17My mother and my father's sister lived in the house with us, Mary.
0:08:17 > 0:08:22She belonged, really, more in the yard world.
0:08:24 > 0:08:28Mary milked the cows and she worked in the garden and so on.
0:08:29 > 0:08:33She did other things too, of course, about the house.
0:08:36 > 0:08:39Her hands scuffled over the bakeboard.
0:08:39 > 0:08:43The reddening stove sent its plaque of heat against her
0:08:43 > 0:08:47Where she stood in a floury apron by the window.
0:08:51 > 0:08:53The subject matter that I put in the baking of bread
0:08:53 > 0:08:57is as important as anything else because it's a ritual thing.
0:08:57 > 0:08:59It's a fragrant moment.
0:08:59 > 0:09:04It characterises security and the reality of that house and that place.
0:09:06 > 0:09:10Sunlight, bread, the meal-bin.
0:09:11 > 0:09:14- Anyway, that's... - And love.- And love, yeah.
0:09:16 > 0:09:20- Which is the big thing.- Yep, yep. The word is risked in that poem.
0:09:21 > 0:09:24For the first time. The word's not mentioned that often.
0:09:24 > 0:09:27But I think it's a big word, you know.
0:09:29 > 0:09:33- Yeah.- Would you be careful about that word, about using that word?
0:09:33 > 0:09:35I'll be very careful about using it, yeah, yeah.
0:09:37 > 0:09:39Er...
0:09:40 > 0:09:42I think so, yeah.
0:09:45 > 0:09:47Here is a space again,
0:09:47 > 0:09:51The scone rising to the tick of two clocks.
0:09:51 > 0:09:54And here is love
0:09:54 > 0:09:56Like a tinsmith's scoop
0:09:56 > 0:09:59Sunk past its gleam in the meal-bin.
0:10:16 > 0:10:19When I started to write in the 1960s,
0:10:19 > 0:10:22your book came out and it was a textual event
0:10:22 > 0:10:26and it was an event in reviewing and in journalism
0:10:26 > 0:10:29and maybe a photograph in the newspaper.
0:10:29 > 0:10:31APPLAUSE
0:10:37 > 0:10:42But over the last 40...50 years, really,
0:10:42 > 0:10:47the appearance of a book becomes a publishing event, as they say.
0:10:48 > 0:10:51There's no way of responding adequately
0:10:51 > 0:10:53to the generous introduction.
0:10:53 > 0:10:57Except to say I think it was very, very good and, er...
0:10:57 > 0:10:58LAUGHTER
0:11:00 > 0:11:02'Self-presentation, self-invention,
0:11:02 > 0:11:04'it comes about as a result
0:11:04 > 0:11:09'of your temperament and your general either wariness or recklessness.'
0:11:09 > 0:11:13- You are going to be right over here. - Right. Thanks.
0:11:13 > 0:11:14I think I'll go into the middle.
0:11:14 > 0:11:17- A drink of water would be great. - I'll get you a bottle of water.
0:11:17 > 0:11:22'Inevitably, nowadays, with interviews and with television
0:11:22 > 0:11:27'and with radio and with the whole promotional aspect of things,
0:11:27 > 0:11:33'unless you take a kind of Beckettian or Frielian standoff,
0:11:33 > 0:11:37'you're into some kind of self-presentation.
0:11:37 > 0:11:40'And it's an uneasy position to be in, really.
0:11:40 > 0:11:46'Because you're coming between a work and an audience
0:11:46 > 0:11:49'and, er...you're doing it deliberately.'
0:11:49 > 0:11:53Are there many people...? Oh, I'm going to have to say this.
0:11:53 > 0:11:56Ladies and gentlemen, if you're going to get books signed here,
0:11:56 > 0:12:01please don't ask me to say, "For..." you know, I'm sorry about that,
0:12:01 > 0:12:03but I have to get home, so have you.
0:12:03 > 0:12:05LAUGHTER
0:12:15 > 0:12:18Of course, Seamus' coming back is a great event.
0:12:21 > 0:12:23It's a particular moment for us
0:12:23 > 0:12:25because he taught with us for so long
0:12:25 > 0:12:28and we are awfully glad to see him again.
0:12:28 > 0:12:31And we always will be. But this has been
0:12:31 > 0:12:34an absence of something like four year, I think, you said.
0:12:36 > 0:12:40I used to feel when Seamus came that it was like Persephone coming back.
0:12:40 > 0:12:43You know, that finally poetry was back on campus.
0:12:44 > 0:12:46One, two, one, two.
0:12:46 > 0:12:48It's not just Harvard that comes to hear Seamus read,
0:12:48 > 0:12:54it's Boston, Cambridge, Belmont, Arlington, New Hampshire, Vermont.
0:12:54 > 0:12:56People stream in from everywhere.
0:12:56 > 0:12:58HUBBUB
0:13:01 > 0:13:05When you read a poem, if you're a critic, as I am, the first response
0:13:05 > 0:13:09is always, "I like this," or, "I don't like this."
0:13:09 > 0:13:11I can't help that, that's the judgment that comes first.
0:13:11 > 0:13:14But then the poem works on you and you begin to be curious
0:13:14 > 0:13:16about how it got to be so good.
0:13:18 > 0:13:22She has the gift for articulating, clarifying
0:13:22 > 0:13:26and teasing out in order
0:13:26 > 0:13:30what is quickly, simultaneously there in a phrase
0:13:30 > 0:13:33or in a poem or in a cadence.
0:13:33 > 0:13:37So she's a teacher as much as anything else, Helen, I think.
0:13:37 > 0:13:39She teaches poetry to you.
0:13:39 > 0:13:42She can teach your own poem to you, you know, in a way.
0:13:42 > 0:13:45Seamus is ready.
0:13:46 > 0:13:51He's a poet, not only of all of Ireland, but of the whole world.
0:13:51 > 0:13:56And he has succeeded in being both a poet of a region
0:13:56 > 0:14:00and its boundaries, but also a poet of wide circumspection,
0:14:00 > 0:14:02thinking about the world at large,
0:14:02 > 0:14:06as well as the boundaries of his own country.
0:14:06 > 0:14:07Seamus Heaney.
0:14:07 > 0:14:09RAPTUROUS APPLAUSE
0:14:22 > 0:14:25The future was a verb in hibernation.
0:14:25 > 0:14:26A spirit moved,
0:14:26 > 0:14:29John Harvard walked the yard.
0:14:30 > 0:14:32Before the classic style,
0:14:32 > 0:14:33Before the clapboard,
0:14:33 > 0:14:36All through the small hours of an origin,
0:14:36 > 0:14:39The books stood open and the gates unbarred.
0:14:41 > 0:14:44'I don't think poetry makes you a better person or anything like that.
0:14:44 > 0:14:47'Wordsworth had it right, it's a pleasure.
0:14:47 > 0:14:50'It's a sophisticated pleasure, it's a learnt pleasure.
0:14:50 > 0:14:54'And I think you do have to develop a sense of it.'
0:14:54 > 0:15:00So this is one of the most unromantic titles in Irish poetry.
0:15:00 > 0:15:03It's called, Two Lorries. And...
0:15:03 > 0:15:04LAUGHTER
0:15:04 > 0:15:07And one lorry is in the 1940s...
0:15:07 > 0:15:12'If you go into rock music, into rock concerts, into the popular music,
0:15:12 > 0:15:17'into the media, it is, on the whole, oral and aural.
0:15:17 > 0:15:20'It isn't literary, it isn't literate.
0:15:20 > 0:15:24'It's post-literate, or pre-literate, if you want.
0:15:24 > 0:15:28'Poems that were learnt by heart belong as little constellations.
0:15:28 > 0:15:32'They're little straws that the mind clutches at at times.
0:15:32 > 0:15:34'And I don't think you could go much further than that
0:15:34 > 0:15:38'in justifying it as a...a utilitarian thing.'
0:15:40 > 0:15:42You're neither here nor there.
0:15:42 > 0:15:46A hurry through which known and strange things pass
0:15:46 > 0:15:51As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
0:15:51 > 0:15:56And catch the heart off-guard and blow it open.
0:15:56 > 0:15:58Thank you very much.
0:15:58 > 0:15:59RAPTUROUS APPLAUSE
0:16:08 > 0:16:10Thank you very much.
0:16:18 > 0:16:20BELLS PEAL
0:16:24 > 0:16:28I sat all morning in the college sick bay
0:16:28 > 0:16:31Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
0:16:34 > 0:16:37I was at St Columb's College, a border,
0:16:37 > 0:16:40and I was called to the president's office one morning
0:16:40 > 0:16:44and I was told that my young brother, Christopher,
0:16:44 > 0:16:48had been killed on the road the night before in County Derry.
0:16:51 > 0:16:54He was out with other brothers.
0:16:54 > 0:16:58He ran across the road from behind a bus, he was struck by a car,
0:16:58 > 0:17:00taken to hospital, died within three hours.
0:17:03 > 0:17:06I came home from college the next day to the wake.
0:17:10 > 0:17:11CHURCH BELLS TOLL
0:17:11 > 0:17:14Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
0:17:14 > 0:17:18Away at school, as my mother held my hand in hers
0:17:18 > 0:17:22And coughed out angry tearless sighs.
0:17:27 > 0:17:33I always remember my father saying to me the morning of the funeral...
0:17:35 > 0:17:38.."Don't you be crying now or the others will cry too."
0:17:38 > 0:17:42And I always remember also, the little white coffin.
0:17:42 > 0:17:44Walking through the village of Bellaghy,
0:17:44 > 0:17:46towards the church behind the coffin.
0:17:46 > 0:17:51It was a very sore, grievous thing for us all,
0:17:51 > 0:17:54but especially for my mother and father.
0:17:54 > 0:17:59In the culture of rural Ireland, in those days,
0:17:59 > 0:18:02you didn't think of your father as suffering grief.
0:18:02 > 0:18:05It was the mother who was suffering grief and undoubtedly,
0:18:05 > 0:18:06that was the case.
0:18:06 > 0:18:09I mean, for all her life afterwards,
0:18:09 > 0:18:13any news of any accident, any loss,
0:18:13 > 0:18:18it just reactivated grief and sympathy in her heart.
0:18:18 > 0:18:24And I'm sure in his, but my father was more stoical and less expressive.
0:18:24 > 0:18:26CHURCH BELLS TOLL
0:18:29 > 0:18:32I saw him for the first time in six weeks.
0:18:33 > 0:18:38Paler now, wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
0:18:38 > 0:18:42He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
0:18:42 > 0:18:47No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
0:18:47 > 0:18:51A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
0:18:53 > 0:18:55BIRDSONG
0:19:09 > 0:19:12I'm not working all the time, by any means.
0:19:12 > 0:19:16I'm what the poet Tom Paulin called a binge writer.
0:19:16 > 0:19:19I go in little flurries of it.
0:19:19 > 0:19:22And I can go without writing for a good while,
0:19:22 > 0:19:24which creates anxiety, of course.
0:19:24 > 0:19:26But, er...anxiety is part of it.
0:19:49 > 0:19:54Faber and Faber, to me, meant almost an unearthly address
0:19:54 > 0:19:56when I first encountered it.
0:20:00 > 0:20:02In those days, it was 24 Russell Square,
0:20:02 > 0:20:05so it was the acme of poetry publishing.
0:20:15 > 0:20:17It was the place where TS Eliot was published.
0:20:17 > 0:20:22TS Eliot came in here around about 1923, I think.
0:20:22 > 0:20:25All the canonical modern poets were published here.
0:20:25 > 0:20:27Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, TS Eliot.
0:20:30 > 0:20:32And my sense of it since 1965
0:20:32 > 0:20:36was it was a house with a family element to it.
0:20:36 > 0:20:38'And a sense of tradition.'
0:20:38 > 0:20:40Everything OK.
0:20:40 > 0:20:44'It was also, in the deep, medieval sense,'
0:20:44 > 0:20:46there was a mystery, the mysteria,
0:20:46 > 0:20:49mystique of poetry and of literature.
0:20:49 > 0:20:52So there's a sense of guardianship and, er,
0:20:52 > 0:20:56domestic responsibility for the art of literature.
0:20:56 > 0:21:01I think that's right about the firm being a family firm,
0:21:01 > 0:21:04having that sense of not playing the game for the next quarter
0:21:04 > 0:21:06or the next 12 months.
0:21:06 > 0:21:08It's always about the steady understanding
0:21:08 > 0:21:11that this is a game played over a long period of time.
0:21:13 > 0:21:16It takes a long time for a poet to find a broader audience.
0:21:16 > 0:21:18And when the mystical thing happens,
0:21:18 > 0:21:21when a poet suddenly moves out of that and into...
0:21:21 > 0:21:24Well, into the education system, for instance,
0:21:24 > 0:21:26and also into the general readers' arena,
0:21:26 > 0:21:30that comes at the strangest of moments over a period of time
0:21:30 > 0:21:33for reasons that you're not entirely in control of.
0:21:33 > 0:21:35But I think it's the steadfast publishing of the poetry
0:21:35 > 0:21:39as a sort of tight cannon becomes all the more important
0:21:39 > 0:21:41because then you're just always presenting the work.
0:21:41 > 0:21:45You're never overstating it, you're never trying to hype unnecessarily,
0:21:45 > 0:21:47you're just saying, "Here is the body of work,
0:21:47 > 0:21:51"we have confidence that in time, this will reach a broad readership."
0:21:51 > 0:21:54UPBEAT INSTRUMENTAL
0:22:00 > 0:22:03We got married in August, 1965.
0:22:03 > 0:22:09Just after my book had been accepted by Faber's.
0:22:10 > 0:22:13We went to London on our honeymoon.
0:22:13 > 0:22:16I'd never been to Faber and Faber.
0:22:18 > 0:22:20I knew that we were going to be close to the thing
0:22:20 > 0:22:23and we made an appointment to go there.
0:22:24 > 0:22:29It was both a social call and a slight change of life,
0:22:29 > 0:22:32going as an author into a publishing house.
0:22:32 > 0:22:33And by coincidence,
0:22:33 > 0:22:38we met Philip Larkin that day in the offices of Faber and Faber.
0:22:38 > 0:22:42As we were going out, Larkin was coming in to meet Monteith.
0:22:42 > 0:22:45And we kind of shook hands with this tall,
0:22:45 > 0:22:49as he called himself in those days, "A balding salmon of a man."
0:22:49 > 0:22:52It was like the beginning of clearly a new life,
0:22:52 > 0:22:53not just marriage-wise,
0:22:53 > 0:22:56but in Seamus' terms, literary-wise.
0:22:56 > 0:23:00And I think, maybe the first book you bought me was The Less Deceived,
0:23:00 > 0:23:03which had just come out, by Larkin, because I loved him.
0:23:03 > 0:23:08And to walk in and see this man the day after your honeymoon
0:23:08 > 0:23:12and Charles Monteith... Seamus said, "This is my wife."
0:23:12 > 0:23:14We'd been married less than 24 hours.
0:23:14 > 0:23:18And Charles Monteith said, "How long have you been married?"
0:23:18 > 0:23:20Isn't that what he said?
0:23:20 > 0:23:22"Have you been married long?"
0:23:22 > 0:23:26- Seamus said, shamefacedly, "Yesterday."- Yes.
0:23:27 > 0:23:31A lot of the poems throughout the world would be
0:23:31 > 0:23:34out of a marriage or into a marriage
0:23:34 > 0:23:37and about the different tests and...
0:23:39 > 0:23:41..you know, what's called for,
0:23:41 > 0:23:46er...in a match, er...
0:23:46 > 0:23:51I think we are a well-matched pair, if...if...different.
0:23:51 > 0:23:53And, er...
0:23:53 > 0:23:54In my green corner.
0:23:54 > 0:23:56LAUGHTER
0:23:56 > 0:23:59Well, there is an element of that and that's a refreshment,
0:23:59 > 0:24:03er...to have...to have energy and, er... Yeah.
0:24:03 > 0:24:04CRICKETS CHIRP
0:24:06 > 0:24:10After 11 years, I was composing love letters again,
0:24:10 > 0:24:14Broaching the word 'wife' like a stored cask.
0:24:15 > 0:24:21The beautiful, useless tang of eucalyptus spelt your absence.
0:24:21 > 0:24:23The aftermath of a mouthful of wine
0:24:23 > 0:24:26Was like inhaling you off a cold pillow.
0:24:29 > 0:24:32It has become a very well-known poem.
0:24:32 > 0:24:37And I loved it for... Obviously, because it's such an erotic,
0:24:37 > 0:24:39exotic love poem.
0:24:39 > 0:24:43Up, black, striped and damasked
0:24:43 > 0:24:46Like the chasuble at a funeral mass,
0:24:46 > 0:24:49The skunk's tail paraded the skunk.
0:24:49 > 0:24:53Night after night I expected her like a visitor.
0:24:54 > 0:24:59The Skunk began with a memory of sitting in California.
0:24:59 > 0:25:03I was told that this family of skunks were arriving.
0:25:03 > 0:25:06Just to sit very still if they came along
0:25:06 > 0:25:09and let them go past, nothing would happen.
0:25:11 > 0:25:15So, sure enough, I was there one night and it was just, eh...
0:25:15 > 0:25:20the skunk herself, not little ones, no skunkettes or skunkeens.
0:25:21 > 0:25:24So she went across from me, I would say she was just like Mae West,
0:25:24 > 0:25:27proceeded with the tail up across the veranda.
0:25:27 > 0:25:31It was something beautiful - invitational.
0:25:31 > 0:25:33Dreamlike.
0:25:35 > 0:25:37It all came back to me last night,
0:25:37 > 0:25:42Stirred by the sootfall of your things at bedtime,
0:25:42 > 0:25:45Your head down, tail-up hunt in a bottom drawer
0:25:45 > 0:25:49For the black plunge-line nightdress.
0:25:53 > 0:25:56Seamus is very truthful. The love poems,
0:25:56 > 0:25:58and they are wonderful love poems,
0:25:58 > 0:26:02a lot of them are, they are not what an absolutely wonderful
0:26:02 > 0:26:04harmonious life we have together,
0:26:04 > 0:26:07that's not what all of them say.
0:26:07 > 0:26:12And to have someone express that extremely well after the event
0:26:12 > 0:26:16can, sort of, bring you up short.
0:26:16 > 0:26:19None of them have hurt me or anything but they have been
0:26:19 > 0:26:22more truthful than maybe I would have admitted to myself.
0:26:22 > 0:26:25IMITATES COCKNEY ACCENT: Well, that's what it's all about, isn't it?
0:26:25 > 0:26:27That's what it's all about!
0:26:27 > 0:26:28LAUGHTER
0:26:43 > 0:26:46I think the act of writing, actually, is an escape,
0:26:46 > 0:26:48if possible, from self-obsession.
0:26:49 > 0:26:51The self may be the material...
0:26:53 > 0:26:56If the rays, the thing comes through,
0:26:56 > 0:27:00if the made thing happens, you have escaped.
0:27:03 > 0:27:06Characteristically, when you're starting,
0:27:06 > 0:27:08you write for the high of finishing, the speed
0:27:08 > 0:27:11and the pleasure of it
0:27:11 > 0:27:13and get there and get it down and,
0:27:13 > 0:27:16"Ha!" Breast the tape. It's a sprint. Joy.
0:27:16 > 0:27:19But...the older you get,
0:27:19 > 0:27:22once you get started, you want to keep it going!
0:27:22 > 0:27:25There are analogies that could be brought up here, but...
0:27:25 > 0:27:28- Bring them up... - Well, if you like...
0:27:28 > 0:27:30LAUGHTER
0:27:30 > 0:27:33..prolong the pleasure and keep it going for as long as possible.
0:27:38 > 0:27:41The actual joy of working is...
0:27:41 > 0:27:45the reward, I would say, now, for me.
0:27:45 > 0:27:48To be absorbed in it and to
0:27:48 > 0:27:52make it lengthen out and to develop it.
0:27:52 > 0:27:53But there's no rule.
0:27:56 > 0:28:00The reason I came to the United States is to take part
0:28:00 > 0:28:02in The New Yorker Festival.
0:28:03 > 0:28:07It's an invitation on behalf of The New Yorker to be
0:28:07 > 0:28:11interviewed by Paul, that's why I'm here.
0:28:11 > 0:28:15APPLAUSE
0:28:15 > 0:28:19Well, the first time we met was in Armagh in the upstairs,
0:28:19 > 0:28:25I think, in the library or the museum on the mall, in 1968.
0:28:25 > 0:28:27I was 16 and, of course, I was writing poems
0:28:27 > 0:28:29with all the fury
0:28:29 > 0:28:31of a 16-year-old.
0:28:31 > 0:28:34I always remember getting the poems,
0:28:34 > 0:28:39written in longhand and unmistakeably the work of a decided stylist
0:28:39 > 0:28:42and already on his way.
0:28:42 > 0:28:44AMPLIFIED SPEECH TO CROWD
0:28:44 > 0:28:47An older poet feels responsible in a way that an older novelist
0:28:47 > 0:28:50doesn't feel responsible for younger novelists.
0:28:50 > 0:28:53That there is a... I use the word "guild", it's not quite right.
0:28:53 > 0:28:54There used to be the old word,
0:28:54 > 0:28:57the mystery of the, the togetherness of the thing.
0:28:57 > 0:29:00I'm absolutely certain that there would have been people who
0:29:00 > 0:29:05would have liked the idea that Seamus and I, for example.
0:29:05 > 0:29:07- would be at loggerheads.- Uh-hm.
0:29:07 > 0:29:10Absolutely. Because that's a bit of news, that would be a bit of news.
0:29:10 > 0:29:14The fact that we get on and that we're very close friends
0:29:14 > 0:29:16is not news.
0:29:16 > 0:29:19The image that I've always found the most fascinating in that poem
0:29:19 > 0:29:24- is the one of the scone rising to the tick of two clocks.- Yes.
0:29:24 > 0:29:28There's some kind of tension between these two clocks
0:29:28 > 0:29:32which I think, actually, contributes to the...
0:29:32 > 0:29:35the charge of the poem in a way that I don't quite understand,
0:29:35 > 0:29:40but may even appeal to information beyond the poem...
0:29:40 > 0:29:43- your aunt and your mother in the house...- That's right.
0:29:43 > 0:29:45Um, is there any...?
0:29:45 > 0:29:48That's very good, this is a revelation now...
0:29:48 > 0:29:50LAUGHTER
0:29:50 > 0:29:53'Seamus certainly has made comments on my poems over
0:29:53 > 0:29:56'those 40 years that have been very helpful.'
0:29:56 > 0:30:00And I would like to think maybe in the other direction, too.
0:30:00 > 0:30:02- Likewise, yeah, yeah. - The thing is, you see,
0:30:02 > 0:30:06you really need another opinion no matter who...
0:30:06 > 0:30:09- what the name is at the bottom of the page.- Yeah.
0:30:09 > 0:30:11Our capacity for self-delusion, at least mine,
0:30:11 > 0:30:13I don't know about yours,
0:30:13 > 0:30:16but my capacity for self-delusion is just...it's infinite.
0:30:16 > 0:30:18APPLAUSE
0:30:18 > 0:30:21I would say up to the age of 50, I was hearing and listening
0:30:21 > 0:30:25and talking about people who were on the move and I think
0:30:25 > 0:30:28that there's a kind of care and excitement.
0:30:28 > 0:30:32All poets are young poets, actually, when they are alive,
0:30:32 > 0:30:33that's the pleasure of it.
0:30:46 > 0:30:48You know how Jupiter
0:30:48 > 0:30:50Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head
0:30:50 > 0:30:53Before he hurls the lightning?
0:30:53 > 0:30:55Well, just now
0:30:55 > 0:30:58He galloped his thunder cart and his horses
0:30:58 > 0:31:00Across a clear blue sky.
0:31:04 > 0:31:10It was written after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
0:31:11 > 0:31:17But it's based upon a poem by Horace, the poem wrote in Latin.
0:31:20 > 0:31:23I had talked about this poem and taught it
0:31:23 > 0:31:26a year previously in Harvard in the fall, as they say,
0:31:26 > 0:31:28in the autumn of 2000.
0:31:30 > 0:31:34Horace hears thunder in the middle of the day, is shocked.
0:31:34 > 0:31:39The thunder is powerful, it comes just like that "bang".
0:31:39 > 0:31:41And he is rattled by the thunder.
0:31:43 > 0:31:45I talked about this and about surprise
0:31:45 > 0:31:49and about the value of that for a writer.
0:31:49 > 0:31:51Then...
0:31:51 > 0:31:54the attacks occur on the...
0:31:56 > 0:32:01..eh, the World Trade Centre and all that desolation and shock.
0:32:01 > 0:32:04And just at that point, shortly after that,
0:32:04 > 0:32:08I remember this poem and I look it up again and it has references
0:32:08 > 0:32:11to the Atlantic shore.
0:32:11 > 0:32:15A reference to the world being a place of violence.
0:32:15 > 0:32:19References to "summis" the highest things being shaken.
0:32:19 > 0:32:24So, I did a version of it where I left out one stanza
0:32:24 > 0:32:26and added another one.
0:32:26 > 0:32:29"Anything can happen, the tallest towers..."
0:32:29 > 0:32:32The tallest towers be overturned,
0:32:32 > 0:32:35Those in high places daunted
0:32:35 > 0:32:36Those overlooked regarded.
0:32:40 > 0:32:42This is, actually, in the text.
0:32:45 > 0:32:50The last stanza is my own, I added it on but I think it's in the spirit
0:32:50 > 0:32:54of danger and in the spirit of shock
0:32:54 > 0:32:57that's in the Horace, in the beginning.
0:32:57 > 0:32:59"Ground gives", it says...
0:32:59 > 0:33:00Ground gives.
0:33:00 > 0:33:01The heaven's weight
0:33:01 > 0:33:04Lifts up off Atlas like a kettle lid.
0:33:05 > 0:33:07Capstones shift.
0:33:07 > 0:33:08Nothing resettles right.
0:33:09 > 0:33:13Telluric ash and fire-spores boil away.
0:33:14 > 0:33:19RUMBLING
0:33:33 > 0:33:37It was impossible for me to avoid a political situation in what
0:33:37 > 0:33:39I wrote, from the beginning.
0:33:41 > 0:33:44You're in the polis as a writer.
0:33:44 > 0:33:48Political comes from the word polis in Greek meaning...
0:33:48 > 0:33:51the community, the city-state, whatever.
0:33:51 > 0:33:56And if there's anything close to a city-state intimacy in
0:33:56 > 0:34:00our life in Ireland and Britain, wherever,
0:34:00 > 0:34:02Northern Ireland is a cockpit.
0:34:02 > 0:34:07I don't know how big Athens was but, Derry and Belfast put together
0:34:07 > 0:34:10are a kind of Athenian situation.
0:34:10 > 0:34:15So, I think responses to that and holding that, either in focus,
0:34:15 > 0:34:22at bay or taking it in, necessarily makes you a political writer.
0:34:25 > 0:34:29That fist would drop a hammer on a Catholic -
0:34:29 > 0:34:32Oh, yes, that kind of thing could start again
0:34:32 > 0:34:35The only Roman collar he tolerates
0:34:35 > 0:34:37Smiles all round his sleek pint of porter.
0:34:41 > 0:34:45In the '60s, things were opening up and a, kind of,
0:34:45 > 0:34:49open North was a possibility, a tolerance was a possibility.
0:34:51 > 0:34:55I didn't think much, in the beginning, about British or Irish.
0:34:55 > 0:34:59OK, I lived in the North, I had a British scholarship,
0:34:59 > 0:35:02I carried a British passport at that stage, didn't think too much
0:35:02 > 0:35:06one way or another. Carried a British passport to go to Lourdes!
0:35:06 > 0:35:10You know, so, so the double identity thing was something you lived with.
0:35:13 > 0:35:17Sectarianism isn't a great subject but...
0:35:17 > 0:35:19it was in our life there.
0:35:21 > 0:35:25The sense of not having a voice in the community was there.
0:35:25 > 0:35:28The sense of, not quite being an outsider...
0:35:28 > 0:35:33I hate these kind of weepy, victim-status remarks like
0:35:33 > 0:35:37"second-class citizen" and so on, they're so sloganised.
0:35:37 > 0:35:40But it was present, all right, for sure.
0:35:40 > 0:35:42It was a caste system, basically,
0:35:42 > 0:35:45you were a different caste from the ruling caste.
0:35:47 > 0:35:52The fact that somebody called Seamus published a book in London
0:35:52 > 0:35:57with Fabers, simply the name, Seamus Heaney - Death Of A Naturalist.
0:35:57 > 0:35:59A poem in it called Docker, which says -
0:35:59 > 0:36:02"That fist would drop a hammer on a Catholic..."
0:36:02 > 0:36:07There was opening some kind of space to let Irish Nationalist or
0:36:07 > 0:36:12Republican feeling breathe in this atmosphere.
0:36:19 > 0:36:24Christmas 1969, I bought myself a book called The Bog People.
0:36:27 > 0:36:30It was a completely exciting text.
0:36:32 > 0:36:38Not only text, but the photographs about bog bodies found in Denmark.
0:36:42 > 0:36:45The theory was that a lot of these bodies were sacrificed
0:36:45 > 0:36:48for the renewal of life.
0:36:51 > 0:36:55The main thing was the entrancement of the photographs
0:36:55 > 0:36:56and the material
0:36:56 > 0:36:59and the landscapes they came out of.
0:37:00 > 0:37:04The most famous, the Tollund Man, was found by two old brothers
0:37:04 > 0:37:05digging in a bog.
0:37:07 > 0:37:12And I could see it happening in Tamlaghtduff or whatever.
0:37:16 > 0:37:19It was mythopoeiac material.
0:37:19 > 0:37:22Every poet I knew wanted to get at it, in a way.
0:37:27 > 0:37:29Out there in Jutland
0:37:29 > 0:37:32In the old man-killing parishes
0:37:32 > 0:37:34I will feel lost,
0:37:34 > 0:37:36Unhappy and at home.
0:37:41 > 0:37:46The killing had started in the North at that stage...
0:37:46 > 0:37:48by 1970...
0:37:48 > 0:37:53The Tollund Man, to me, was an emblem of grief...
0:37:53 > 0:37:56and violence and intimate violence.
0:37:59 > 0:38:01The head lifts,
0:38:01 > 0:38:03The chin is a visor
0:38:03 > 0:38:04Raised above the vent
0:38:04 > 0:38:06Of his slashed throat.
0:38:09 > 0:38:12The material kept promising. First of all, because of its
0:38:12 > 0:38:15relevance to violence around the place.
0:38:15 > 0:38:19But also because of its intimacy with the very land I grew up in.
0:38:20 > 0:38:25I could feel this in my...nostrils, the feeling of a bog.
0:38:26 > 0:38:30I could feel what it must have been like to be dumped in there.
0:38:30 > 0:38:33And a lot of those poems in North,
0:38:33 > 0:38:35which are strange things,
0:38:35 > 0:38:39they come out of the book, they come out of my intimacy with the bog
0:38:39 > 0:38:45as a domain. They come out of the situation where the writer was
0:38:45 > 0:38:48expected to address the violence around about him.
0:38:50 > 0:38:54But now he lies perfected in my memory,
0:38:54 > 0:38:57Down to the red horn of his nails,
0:38:57 > 0:39:00Hung in the scales with beauty and atrocity.
0:39:28 > 0:39:32I did the Station Island pilgrimage three times at least.
0:39:32 > 0:39:36I think I did it twice while we were at university.
0:39:36 > 0:39:40It was an end-of-term bus ride to Pettigo
0:39:40 > 0:39:45and it was a gang went, that kind of flirtatious undergraduates,
0:39:45 > 0:39:47giggling young women and men.
0:39:48 > 0:39:53And there was an element of courtship and all that involved in it.
0:39:54 > 0:39:58We were practising young Catholics, so to speak.
0:39:58 > 0:40:00HE CHUCKLES
0:40:00 > 0:40:02Er, it was the Catholic Student Society.
0:40:04 > 0:40:10It was part of the folklore of the subculture of Irish Catholicism.
0:40:13 > 0:40:19Part of the mission of the young graduate in my time was
0:40:19 > 0:40:21to secularise yourself, you know.
0:40:21 > 0:40:24I mean, to Joyce-ify yourself, if possible.
0:40:26 > 0:40:29Any literary reading of the 20th century...
0:40:30 > 0:40:34..leads to that challenge to faith.
0:40:35 > 0:40:40The doctrinal observance, the practising Catholicism...
0:40:40 > 0:40:41it just went.
0:40:43 > 0:40:47Definitely, I have what you would call a Catholic imagination.
0:40:49 > 0:40:56Insofar as, I found it difficult and unnecessary, indeed, to...
0:40:56 > 0:41:01deconstruct the shape received, that is, of...
0:41:01 > 0:41:03of a here and now
0:41:03 > 0:41:07and a big otherwhere, elsewhere.
0:41:16 > 0:41:18After my parents died...
0:41:18 > 0:41:24after I was at these deathbeds and, you ask yourself - "What happened?"
0:41:25 > 0:41:27It was something totally simple.
0:41:27 > 0:41:30Life - life gone - death.
0:41:30 > 0:41:31Corpse.
0:41:31 > 0:41:34HE CLAPS HIS HANDS
0:41:34 > 0:41:39Er...the word... all those old words that, er...
0:41:39 > 0:41:43you were taught about soul when you were at school and the
0:41:43 > 0:41:46soul was a white handkerchief and you dirtied it when you sinned
0:41:46 > 0:41:50and so on, and that, that inadequate equipment was given to you
0:41:50 > 0:41:52and you didn't think much about it
0:41:52 > 0:41:54and you didn't think much about leaving it.
0:41:54 > 0:41:57But then, later on, I thought, "You know, well, these words 'soul'
0:41:57 > 0:42:02"and 'spirit', they represent a reality."
0:42:02 > 0:42:04I mean, it's a large...
0:42:05 > 0:42:08..indeterminate, inchoate space,
0:42:08 > 0:42:12but the language has a way of gesturing towards it anyway.
0:42:16 > 0:42:20The poems I wrote after my mother died are called Clearances
0:42:20 > 0:42:23and it was about the fall of a tree, OK,
0:42:23 > 0:42:28but, I mean, when a tree falls, there is this extra light that comes
0:42:28 > 0:42:29just in a moment.
0:42:31 > 0:42:32That was the image I had.
0:42:37 > 0:42:38...my coeval
0:42:38 > 0:42:42Chestnut from a jam jar in a hole,
0:42:42 > 0:42:46Its heft and hush become a bright nowhere,
0:42:46 > 0:42:49A soul ramifying and for ever
0:42:49 > 0:42:53Silent, beyond silence listened for.
0:42:59 > 0:43:05Is there anything in your poems in any way useful as an epitaph?
0:43:05 > 0:43:08HE CHUCKLES
0:43:08 > 0:43:10Er, I don't...
0:43:13 > 0:43:15I think we'll leave that one, Charlie.
0:43:15 > 0:43:17Really...?
0:43:23 > 0:43:25I don't know, eh...
0:43:27 > 0:43:29As an epitaph...
0:43:29 > 0:43:34I remember when Czeslaw Milosz died,
0:43:34 > 0:43:38I translated a bit out of Oedipus At Colonus
0:43:38 > 0:43:44where the old king is called by a mysterious voice to come up the hill
0:43:44 > 0:43:49and he disappears mysteriously into the ground, out of the ground,
0:43:49 > 0:43:51into the ground.
0:43:51 > 0:43:56And the messenger tells the story and he says,
0:43:56 > 0:43:59"Wherever that man went he went gratefully."
0:43:59 > 0:44:01Something like that.
0:44:01 > 0:44:02So...
0:44:02 > 0:44:07that is not an epitaph, necessarily, for the graveyard, but
0:44:07 > 0:44:12it's the kind of epitaph that would work, I think, would do.
0:44:24 > 0:44:27I would, absolutely, not set myself up as a muse
0:44:27 > 0:44:30and I would hate to use that term about myself
0:44:30 > 0:44:31or for anybody else to.
0:44:33 > 0:44:39Muse - it represents an energy, which is probably related originally,
0:44:39 > 0:44:42to the erotic, among other things,
0:44:42 > 0:44:47and it, it does stand for some kind of psychic energy,
0:44:47 > 0:44:49mystery, if you like.
0:44:49 > 0:44:53Undoubtedly, it's an allowable term, I think.
0:44:53 > 0:44:56I disallow it, a bit, to myself, actually.
0:44:59 > 0:45:00Bushing the door
0:45:00 > 0:45:05My arms full of wild cherry and rhododendron,
0:45:05 > 0:45:08I hear her small lost weeping through the hall
0:45:08 > 0:45:11That bells and hoarsens on my name
0:45:11 > 0:45:13My name
0:45:13 > 0:45:15O love, here is the blame.
0:45:19 > 0:45:22I recognise myself in most of the poems.
0:45:23 > 0:45:28It is there, the whole, sort of,
0:45:28 > 0:45:30trajectory of, of a marriage.
0:45:33 > 0:45:35When the children were very young,
0:45:35 > 0:45:38I think most males would have to deal with this,
0:45:38 > 0:45:40when someone has three young children,
0:45:40 > 0:45:42which is 48 hours a day, sort of thing.
0:45:45 > 0:45:49Seamus did need peace to do his work as anybody does and
0:45:49 > 0:45:54I was always grateful to have it. I would hate anyone to say
0:45:54 > 0:45:55at the end of all this,
0:45:55 > 0:45:58"If he had been married to someone else who made less demands on him,
0:45:58 > 0:46:00"he would have done better."
0:46:00 > 0:46:03I was very...I am very aware of that.
0:46:04 > 0:46:06And she:
0:46:06 > 0:46:08"I have closed my widowed ears
0:46:08 > 0:46:12"To the sulphurous news of poets and poetry
0:46:12 > 0:46:15"Why could you not have, oftener, in our years
0:46:15 > 0:46:19"Unclenched, and come down laughing from your room
0:46:19 > 0:46:22"And walked the twilight with me and your children...?"
0:46:24 > 0:46:28If anybody's blamed in that poem, it's Seamus blaming himself.
0:46:28 > 0:46:31Even though the words of blame are put into my mouth, in fact,
0:46:31 > 0:46:34the blame is...emanates from Seamus...
0:46:34 > 0:46:38and regret, about himself.
0:46:38 > 0:46:40But, do you think...is it blame? I don't know...
0:46:40 > 0:46:43Well, there's an element of, you know...
0:46:43 > 0:46:46"Why did you not oftener come down from that room...?"
0:46:46 > 0:46:48Oh, aye, aye, that's true.
0:46:48 > 0:46:49LAUGHTER
0:46:49 > 0:46:53- Blame!- I think that's good craic, really.- Yeah.
0:47:04 > 0:47:06I've lived in America quite a bit.
0:47:06 > 0:47:09I've lived in Belfast.
0:47:09 > 0:47:11I've lived in Dublin.
0:47:11 > 0:47:14There are hardly any Dublin poems.
0:47:14 > 0:47:20I think that only means that whatever brings the self alive
0:47:20 > 0:47:21is in the memory.
0:47:24 > 0:47:27The cityscape doesn't appear.
0:47:27 > 0:47:31It doesn't mean I'm against it in any way, it just means that
0:47:31 > 0:47:33it doesn't have any imaginative aura.
0:47:46 > 0:47:49CHATTERING
0:47:49 > 0:47:52I first came across Derek as a textual creature.
0:47:52 > 0:47:54I came across his poems.
0:47:54 > 0:47:56The book's meant a lot to me.
0:47:58 > 0:48:02We went to a conference on Caribbean literature and
0:48:02 > 0:48:04spoke about this man, long before I met him.
0:48:06 > 0:48:11We did meet in 1979, I remember that. Derek had sent me a note to say
0:48:11 > 0:48:15he objected to derogatory remarks that were made
0:48:15 > 0:48:18by A Alvarez in The New York Review Of Books,
0:48:18 > 0:48:19so he was in New York
0:48:19 > 0:48:22and we met in Pete's Tavern on Washington Irving Place.
0:48:22 > 0:48:25That...1979.
0:48:25 > 0:48:26I got a call, a phone call...
0:48:27 > 0:48:31..from where I was staying and it was very peremptory
0:48:31 > 0:48:32and authoritative.
0:48:32 > 0:48:34It said, "Come now."
0:48:34 > 0:48:36So this was Seamus Heaney, so I had to go.
0:48:36 > 0:48:39CHATTERING
0:48:39 > 0:48:42Well, I write plays myself and I write in verse.
0:48:42 > 0:48:47And I just think that verse is a very natural medium for theatre,
0:48:47 > 0:48:52it's not a...an archaic or old-fashioned medium.
0:48:52 > 0:48:58My real preoccupation in doing the book, even as a libretto,
0:48:58 > 0:49:01was the diction of the piece.
0:49:01 > 0:49:04Which had to be credible diction.
0:49:04 > 0:49:07Now, that's very hard, that's not common.
0:49:07 > 0:49:12SINGING
0:49:12 > 0:49:17I think all 20th-century poets now have learnt to adapt
0:49:17 > 0:49:23colloquiality and the sublime, and certainly Yeats has it.
0:49:23 > 0:49:28And I think Seamus' tone, the pitch of his writing is extremely
0:49:28 > 0:49:29accessible for the voice.
0:49:31 > 0:49:37I was elated and moved that Derek had committed himself to so much work
0:49:37 > 0:49:40and committed his own talents to doing this.
0:49:40 > 0:49:43It's no small commitment to be here for a month with,
0:49:43 > 0:49:46with work that is not your own work.
0:49:46 > 0:49:50First time directing an opera, taking a risk.
0:49:50 > 0:49:53So, I was moved and, er...
0:49:53 > 0:49:54proud!
0:49:58 > 0:50:02The Italians say "Traduttore, traditore" -
0:50:02 > 0:50:03"The translator is a traitor."
0:50:06 > 0:50:12The languages I know aren't particularly suited to my poems
0:50:12 > 0:50:16in translation. I know French well enough to read it.
0:50:16 > 0:50:20HE SPEAKS IN FRENCH
0:50:20 > 0:50:21It flows upwards.
0:50:21 > 0:50:25SHE SPEAKS IN FRENCH
0:50:25 > 0:50:29And my voice in poems I kind of go to the floor.
0:50:29 > 0:50:36SHE SPEAKS IN GERMAN
0:50:36 > 0:50:41With the genius of a language like Spanish, it's much more rhetorical
0:50:41 > 0:50:43than any way I write.
0:50:43 > 0:50:48HE SPEAKS IN SPANISH
0:50:48 > 0:50:51When I heard Death Of A Naturalist translated into Dutch,
0:50:51 > 0:50:53it was kind of...
0:50:53 > 0:50:55HE IMITATES DUTCH SPEAKING
0:50:55 > 0:50:58..the word "sloten" which means dykes or ditches
0:50:58 > 0:51:02seemed to be exactly right for frogspawn and flax dams.
0:51:02 > 0:51:07SHE SPEAKS IN DUTCH
0:51:07 > 0:51:12I simply do not know what would happen to these poems
0:51:12 > 0:51:16in Japanese or Chinese. I don't know what that means at all.
0:51:16 > 0:51:23SHE SPEAKS JAPANESE
0:51:23 > 0:51:31HE SPEAKS CHINESE
0:51:32 > 0:51:37You can translate shapes, wisdom, intonation...
0:51:39 > 0:51:43..it is better to translate than not to translate, obviously.
0:51:55 > 0:51:57University was very important.
0:51:57 > 0:52:00I don't think I would have become the writer I am,
0:52:00 > 0:52:01maybe not a writer at all,
0:52:01 > 0:52:03if I hadn't gone to university.
0:52:06 > 0:52:09When I was at Queen's, I was your typical undergraduate.
0:52:09 > 0:52:14I was doing a number of lectures, avoiding others,
0:52:14 > 0:52:17but also interested in the literary side of things.
0:52:21 > 0:52:25During the course of my years there, I wrote five or six poems that
0:52:25 > 0:52:28were published in university magazines,
0:52:28 > 0:52:31but I never, entirely, took myself seriously -
0:52:31 > 0:52:35I called myself "incertus" - uncertain.
0:52:35 > 0:52:36Which is what I was.
0:52:36 > 0:52:41I'd been taught that modern poetry was ironical and urban
0:52:41 > 0:52:44and so, I thought, "I don't really have anything much there."
0:52:46 > 0:52:51But suddenly, I say, via Kavanagh, via Hughes, via contemporary
0:52:51 > 0:52:53Irish poetry I thought,
0:52:53 > 0:52:58"Hey, this material, on my own from County Derry, is workable."
0:52:58 > 0:53:00And, up comes Tractors...
0:53:00 > 0:53:01HE CHUCKLES
0:53:01 > 0:53:04..a poem about tractors. That was the first poem that was published
0:53:04 > 0:53:06in a public...forum.
0:53:06 > 0:53:09It was accepted by the Belfast Telegraph in November -
0:53:09 > 0:53:11very important to me.
0:53:11 > 0:53:14I remember one line in it, which I liked at the time,
0:53:14 > 0:53:18that the tractors gargled "sadly across furrows".
0:53:18 > 0:53:21I really can't remember much else about it,
0:53:21 > 0:53:24except that it had purchase, you know.
0:53:24 > 0:53:27Your writing poems and...
0:53:27 > 0:53:32sometimes the language is skidding over the surface, it is
0:53:32 > 0:53:36catching something, but it doesn't have real haulage work.
0:53:36 > 0:53:39And I felt that some of the lines in Tractors was doing haulage work,
0:53:39 > 0:53:43it was hauling up, not just image but something out of the
0:53:43 > 0:53:47bottom of myself, out of the nervous system, out of the
0:53:47 > 0:53:52sensual, sensuous retainer system that's in your memory
0:53:52 > 0:53:53and in your body.
0:53:58 > 0:54:01- ANNOUNCER:- The bodies were found in the townland of Altnamachin
0:54:01 > 0:54:04and they have now been removed by army helicopter to a hospital morgue.
0:54:04 > 0:54:07RUC forensic experts have been at the scene all morning
0:54:07 > 0:54:10trying to put together a picture of the crime.
0:54:10 > 0:54:12They believe that both men were shot where the bodies were found.
0:54:12 > 0:54:15One lying on a grass verge by the roadside
0:54:15 > 0:54:17and the second man about 40 yards away.
0:54:17 > 0:54:20Death was caused in the first case by gunshot wounds to the head
0:54:20 > 0:54:24and back and in the second, by gunshot wounds to the back only.
0:54:24 > 0:54:27It's believed that both men were Catholics and that they were
0:54:27 > 0:54:29returning from the AllIreland semifinal between
0:54:29 > 0:54:32Dublin and Derry when they were picked up by their killers.
0:54:32 > 0:54:34How do you write about somebody who was the victim of
0:54:34 > 0:54:36a random sectarian killing?
0:54:39 > 0:54:41What blazed ahead of you?
0:54:41 > 0:54:44A faked roadblock?
0:54:44 > 0:54:45The red lamp swung
0:54:45 > 0:54:48And sudden brakes and stalling engine
0:54:48 > 0:54:52Voices, heads hooded and the cold-nosed gun.
0:54:54 > 0:54:59Colum McCartney, second cousin, a non-political fellow.
0:54:59 > 0:55:03Someone whom I didn't know personally, at all,
0:55:03 > 0:55:06really, but I knew who he was, where he was from.
0:55:08 > 0:55:10Or in your driving mirror
0:55:10 > 0:55:14Tailing headlights that pulled out suddenly and flagged you down
0:55:14 > 0:55:18Where you weren't known and far from what you knew
0:55:18 > 0:55:22The lowland clays and waters of Lough Beg
0:55:22 > 0:55:24Church Island spire
0:55:24 > 0:55:26Its soft tree line of yew.
0:55:29 > 0:55:33That poem in memory of him started with a memory of Dante,
0:55:33 > 0:55:36on Easter Sunday morning
0:55:36 > 0:55:40walking along with Virgil after coming out of Hell mouth
0:55:40 > 0:55:42along this little lake.
0:55:44 > 0:55:50A little lake with mist, reeds, a very benign dawn-like atmosphere
0:55:50 > 0:55:56and it reminded me of...where Colum McCartney grew up near Lough Beg.
0:55:56 > 0:56:02So I more or less transposed a vision of myself and McCartney
0:56:02 > 0:56:03walking along that strand.
0:56:06 > 0:56:11I turn because the sweeping of your feet has stopped behind me
0:56:11 > 0:56:15To find you on your knees with blood and roadside muck
0:56:15 > 0:56:17In your hair and eyes
0:56:17 > 0:56:20Then kneel in front of you in brimming grass
0:56:20 > 0:56:22And gather up cold handfuls of the dew
0:56:22 > 0:56:25To wash you, cousin.
0:56:26 > 0:56:30There's a kind of beauty, I hope, about the ending.
0:56:30 > 0:56:34The dead person is resurrected in a benign landscape,
0:56:34 > 0:56:36which is classical elegy.
0:56:38 > 0:56:43I dab you clean with moss fine as the drizzle out of a low cloud
0:56:44 > 0:56:48I lift you under the arms and lay you flat
0:56:48 > 0:56:51With rushes that shoot green again
0:56:51 > 0:56:53I plait green scapulars
0:56:53 > 0:56:55To wear over your shroud.
0:56:59 > 0:57:02The two parts that are always operating in poetry
0:57:02 > 0:57:05is the entrancement part where you let yourself go
0:57:05 > 0:57:09and you do that elegy and then the self-critical part.
0:57:09 > 0:57:13And in Station Island, Colum McCartney came back to ask,
0:57:13 > 0:57:16"Why did you not make it a dirty deed?
0:57:16 > 0:57:17"Why did you make it a beautiful story?"
0:57:21 > 0:57:23That Protestant who shot me through the head
0:57:23 > 0:57:25I accuse directly
0:57:25 > 0:57:27But indirectly, you
0:57:27 > 0:57:33Who now atone perhaps upon this bed for the way you whitewashed ugliness
0:57:33 > 0:57:37And drew the lovely blinds of the Purgatorio
0:57:37 > 0:57:40And saccharined my death with morning dew.
0:57:59 > 0:58:06The decision that we made to go to Glanmore in Wicklow in 1972
0:58:06 > 0:58:10was unexpected and out of an opportunity.
0:58:13 > 0:58:17I was going to stop teaching in Queen's.
0:58:17 > 0:58:19We were looking for a house in County Derry, County Tyrone,
0:58:19 > 0:58:21maybe even County Down.
0:58:21 > 0:58:23Driving around in the evenings...
0:58:23 > 0:58:26when we got this note from Ann saying there's a house
0:58:26 > 0:58:31in County Wicklow. We went down to County Wicklow at Easter in '72.
0:58:31 > 0:58:35We decided there and then, "We'll go to this place." All of a sudden
0:58:35 > 0:58:39we had made a decision to move from Belfast to Wicklow.
0:58:39 > 0:58:42There was a story on the front page of The Irish Press -
0:58:42 > 0:58:44"Heaney Moves South".
0:58:44 > 0:58:46Then there was an editorial in The Irish Times...
0:58:47 > 0:58:50It was mythologized, you know, from the start...
0:58:50 > 0:58:53So...in a sense I wasn't just dealing with my own life,
0:58:53 > 0:58:56I was dealing with the Borges And I factor,
0:58:56 > 0:58:59the textual creature who was living a life
0:58:59 > 0:59:01separate from you in the newsprint.
0:59:08 > 0:59:14That was the time when I felt that I committed myself to poetry and
0:59:14 > 0:59:18allowed myself to be called "poet".
0:59:18 > 0:59:22I remember going down with the two children at the beginning of the
0:59:22 > 0:59:28'73-'74 year. I went down to school with the two boys to enrol them
0:59:28 > 0:59:31and Master Whelan wrote in the roll book -
0:59:31 > 0:59:35occupation of parent or whatever - he wrote "file". He didn't ask me.
0:59:35 > 0:59:40And I remember thinking, "Well... OK, I can live with that now,
0:59:40 > 0:59:42"because I don't have any other job."
0:59:47 > 0:59:49To me, it's a very large word - poet.
0:59:50 > 0:59:55And, er, to think of yourself, to allow yourself to be called poet...
0:59:56 > 0:59:58..is to...
1:00:00 > 1:00:02..consecrate yourself.
1:00:02 > 1:00:05HE LAUGHS
1:00:05 > 1:00:07And...
1:00:07 > 1:00:10I think it's very serious, actually, that's all.
1:00:10 > 1:00:12It wasn't that I wasn't serious before,
1:00:12 > 1:00:14I was a probationer, if you like,
1:00:14 > 1:00:16or a deacon!
1:00:16 > 1:00:21These are rather grand terms but I'm talking about, about something that
1:00:21 > 1:00:22really happened, you know.
1:00:44 > 1:00:46I never regretted moving.
1:00:46 > 1:00:48I had, of course, complications,
1:00:48 > 1:00:52but I never felt that was the wrong thing to do, never.
1:00:52 > 1:00:57Because I went straight into a confident writing life.
1:00:57 > 1:00:59Into a new energy.
1:01:05 > 1:01:08I never left the North as a subject, I mean, it was in me,
1:01:08 > 1:01:12I was already, what...? 33 when I moved. It was in me.
1:01:12 > 1:01:15It was the subject and it continued.
1:01:15 > 1:01:20I mean, if you think what was going on from 1972 -
1:01:20 > 1:01:22January was Bloody Sunday but plenty
1:01:22 > 1:01:27happened between '72 and '79 and '82 and then 1990
1:01:27 > 1:01:30was one of the most brutal years ever.
1:01:33 > 1:01:40As a writer, I felt, it had become, for me...
1:01:40 > 1:01:45if you like, a cliche. The situation was stalemate
1:01:45 > 1:01:49and cancerous. It was noxious, malignant.
1:01:49 > 1:01:53And not moving. And when I got through
1:01:53 > 1:01:56into the poems of Seeing Things...
1:01:56 > 1:01:59in 1989, that was...
1:01:59 > 1:02:04I kind of kicked my heels, got shot of the burden of...
1:02:04 > 1:02:10the civic responsibility, if you like, and returned to lyric
1:02:10 > 1:02:12carry-on or lyric...
1:02:12 > 1:02:14not nonchalance...
1:02:14 > 1:02:17yeah, insouciance.
1:02:17 > 1:02:20I mean, really that's the best situation for writing lyric poetry.
1:02:20 > 1:02:21Insouciance.
1:02:26 > 1:02:28A rowan like a lipsticked girl
1:02:29 > 1:02:32Between the by-road and the main road
1:02:32 > 1:02:35Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
1:02:35 > 1:02:37Stand off among the rushes
1:02:38 > 1:02:41There are the mud-flowers of dialect
1:02:41 > 1:02:44And the immortelles of perfect pitch
1:02:44 > 1:02:48And that moment when the bird sings very close
1:02:48 > 1:02:49To the music of what happens.
1:02:50 > 1:02:53BIRDSONG
1:03:01 > 1:03:03NEWS THEME
1:03:03 > 1:03:07- ANNOUNCER:- Seamus Heaney wins this year's Nobel Prize for Literature.
1:03:12 > 1:03:17Good evening. "For works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth..."
1:03:17 > 1:03:20With those words of citation the poet Seamus Heaney
1:03:20 > 1:03:22was today named as the winner of this year's
1:03:22 > 1:03:24Nobel Prize for Literature.
1:03:24 > 1:03:27- REPORTER:- At the Heaney household in Dublin it's been a hectic day.
1:03:27 > 1:03:30The phone hasn't stopped since the fax from Stockholm
1:03:30 > 1:03:32arrived after lunch
1:03:32 > 1:03:34but Seamus Heaney's two youngest children still haven't
1:03:34 > 1:03:36heard from Dad.
1:03:36 > 1:03:39We were in Greece, for the first time, with friends,
1:03:39 > 1:03:42and we hadn't spoken to the kids for a couple or three days.
1:03:42 > 1:03:46I rang home, the phone was answered and Christopher said,
1:03:46 > 1:03:50"Oh, Dad. Oh, Dad! We're so proud!" And I thought,
1:03:50 > 1:03:51"What? What?!"
1:03:51 > 1:03:53And he said, "Did you not know?"
1:03:53 > 1:03:55I said, "No, what...?"
1:03:55 > 1:03:58And he said, "You've won..." et cetera...
1:03:59 > 1:04:01SHE SIGHS
1:04:01 > 1:04:03And Marie was next door.
1:04:03 > 1:04:05She said, "What's wrong?"
1:04:05 > 1:04:09And I said to Christopher, "Well, you'd better tell your mother."
1:04:09 > 1:04:12"Mum... Dad has won the Nobel Prize."
1:04:12 > 1:04:15And I said, "Chris, are you sure it isn't a hoax?
1:04:15 > 1:04:19"Are you sure it isn't one of our friends sending him up?"
1:04:19 > 1:04:22He said, "Mum, there are camera crews at the door.
1:04:22 > 1:04:27"I've been on radio, Catherine has been on radio, we are besieged.
1:04:27 > 1:04:28"Come home!"
1:04:28 > 1:04:31- REPORTER:- It was the type of homecoming Seamus Heaney could never
1:04:31 > 1:04:34in his wildest dreams have envisaged when he and his wife Marie
1:04:34 > 1:04:37left for a walking tour in Greece last month.
1:04:37 > 1:04:41I have to say, one of the biggest moments of my life was
1:04:41 > 1:04:45looking out the window and seeing the red carpet, with John Bruton
1:04:45 > 1:04:48who was the Taoiseach of the time and our three children
1:04:48 > 1:04:50standing on it, it was lovely.
1:04:51 > 1:04:54So, that's my Nobel memory, it's not the embarrassment to me
1:04:54 > 1:04:56- that it is to Seamus! - Doesn't embarrass me.
1:04:56 > 1:04:59And, as I said at the interview, "He deserved it."
1:04:59 > 1:05:00LAUGHTER
1:05:00 > 1:05:02I repeat!
1:05:04 > 1:05:07- ANNOUNCER:- 1,200 guests gathered to pay tribute to ten laureates.
1:05:07 > 1:05:12Six American, a German, a Mexican, a Dutchman and Seamus Heaney.
1:05:17 > 1:05:19Well, I'd been used to a certain amount of high procedure
1:05:19 > 1:05:22in the academic world, you know.
1:05:22 > 1:05:27I'd done Encaenia at Oxford as professor of poetry,
1:05:27 > 1:05:31been at commencement days in Harvard, graduation days here and there,
1:05:31 > 1:05:35and you wondered, "Would the Nobel ceremony be different?"
1:05:35 > 1:05:39But, undoubtedly, it is the ceremony that rose to us on occasion.
1:05:41 > 1:05:43In his speech,
1:05:43 > 1:05:46the Swedish writer Osten Sjostrand linked Heaney's work to
1:05:46 > 1:05:49that of another Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh,
1:05:49 > 1:05:52who believed the local can articulate the universal,
1:05:52 > 1:05:55that God is in the bits and pieces of every day.
1:05:55 > 1:05:59We all admire your compelling images and rhythms.
1:05:59 > 1:06:03I did feel very alone and very strange, really.
1:06:04 > 1:06:07An element of "why me?" and "my God".
1:06:07 > 1:06:11I'm happy to invite you to receive the prize from the hands
1:06:11 > 1:06:13of His Majesty the King.
1:06:13 > 1:06:15WIND MUSIC PLAYS
1:06:15 > 1:06:17APPLAUSE
1:06:27 > 1:06:31One of the great things about it was the family were there,
1:06:31 > 1:06:36and I sort of feel at a death when you see a big family,
1:06:36 > 1:06:39you think it's some sort of safety net, that so many people,
1:06:39 > 1:06:43no-one's going to have to bear the brunt of that all that grief,
1:06:43 > 1:06:45and I felt that very strongly.
1:06:45 > 1:06:48I, alone, or you, alone, didn't have to bear the brunt of all this joy
1:06:48 > 1:06:51because our family were there.
1:06:51 > 1:06:55I never felt more strongly the value of the familial
1:06:55 > 1:06:58thing as I did at that time.
1:06:58 > 1:07:00It was an emotional time indeed.
1:07:00 > 1:07:05It has been, but my family are fairly robust.
1:07:05 > 1:07:10My son Michael said, "No blubbering now."
1:07:10 > 1:07:11So...
1:07:11 > 1:07:13But I did have, as they say,
1:07:13 > 1:07:16eye contact them as I bowed towards the audience
1:07:16 > 1:07:21and that was one of the happiest eye contacts I've had with my family...
1:07:22 > 1:07:23ever.
1:07:23 > 1:07:29I heard him once define it as being hit by a mostly benign avalanche...
1:07:29 > 1:07:31and that's about true.
1:07:31 > 1:07:33It is. It certainly is life-changing,
1:07:33 > 1:07:35no matter how hard you try to resist it.
1:07:39 > 1:07:44I have often said it's one of the few magic words left in the world.
1:07:44 > 1:07:48It's waved over somebody and it's always cited.
1:07:52 > 1:07:53When...
1:07:53 > 1:07:57Joseph Brodsky, who I knew, Derek Walcott got the call,
1:07:57 > 1:08:00so to speak, and I met them afterwards,
1:08:00 > 1:08:06I myself had a sense of them going through the ceo draiochta as it were.
1:08:07 > 1:08:10It was terrific to have known those creatures
1:08:10 > 1:08:14because Brodsky continued his ragamuffin self,
1:08:14 > 1:08:19not changed at all, and likewise Mr Walcott.
1:08:23 > 1:08:28Of course people are bound to be upset, and there are certainly
1:08:28 > 1:08:30other contenders for the prize in this country.
1:08:33 > 1:08:37I think it was very difficult for a lot of writers. Yes, absolutely.
1:08:37 > 1:08:41No doubt. You'd only be an idiot, a kind of lunatic,
1:08:41 > 1:08:45to think that it wouldn't cause, you know...
1:08:45 > 1:08:51distress, complication, rage, jealously, whatever.
1:08:51 > 1:08:56But, in these cases, it's the way people conduct themselves...
1:08:56 > 1:08:59is important.
1:08:59 > 1:09:01And...
1:09:01 > 1:09:05people conducted themselves, in my book, very well
1:09:05 > 1:09:09given that they had a lot to handle.
1:09:09 > 1:09:14And... So, that is really where my interest in it begins and ends.
1:09:15 > 1:09:18This is a lottery amongst other things.
1:09:18 > 1:09:20It's a committee decision.
1:09:20 > 1:09:24And, you know, even though it's a magic word,
1:09:24 > 1:09:26it isn't necessarily the last word on anything.
1:09:31 > 1:09:36"All through that Sunday afternoon, a kite flew above Sunday.
1:09:36 > 1:09:41"A tightened drumhead, a armful of blow chaff.
1:09:41 > 1:09:44"I'd seen it grey and slippy in the making."
1:09:47 > 1:09:49The dedications to the children were
1:09:49 > 1:09:53because we both belong to the children.
1:09:53 > 1:09:57The things that they were about, in Catherine's case,
1:09:57 > 1:09:59that little stick that I had given her.
1:09:59 > 1:10:00"Here's a Catherine Anne.
1:10:00 > 1:10:02"A kite for Michael and Christopher."
1:10:05 > 1:10:09It is a very serious poem. It's a grievous poem, in a way.
1:10:13 > 1:10:16It was risky to write it, in a way, I felt.
1:10:18 > 1:10:22I dedicated it to them, but it was remembering my own father.
1:10:24 > 1:10:29The one extraordinary thing that he did for me
1:10:29 > 1:10:32in childhood was fly a kite.
1:10:32 > 1:10:35He wasn't inclined to fly kites. He wasn't...
1:10:35 > 1:10:37rarely out playing, you know?
1:10:40 > 1:10:45He had a playful sense of the world, but he was a country man and a farmer
1:10:45 > 1:10:47and he didn't to go
1:10:47 > 1:10:50and play with the children on the strand or on the beach,
1:10:50 > 1:10:53or touch football or anything like that.
1:10:53 > 1:10:56But the one extraordinary thing I remember was the kite,
1:10:56 > 1:10:58and the kite is extraordinary in itself.
1:11:00 > 1:11:04"But now it was far up like a small black lark.
1:11:04 > 1:11:08"But now it dragged as if the bellied string were a wet rope
1:11:08 > 1:11:11"hauled upon to lift a shoal.
1:11:13 > 1:11:17"My friend says that the human soul is about the weight of a snipe."
1:11:19 > 1:11:24It looked so limber and light up there, but there's a powerful pull.
1:11:24 > 1:11:30There's a weight and it goes up, but it's hanging.
1:11:30 > 1:11:33Gravity is in that string.
1:11:33 > 1:11:36So, it's that sensation that I remembered...
1:11:37 > 1:11:41..and it then became the long-tailed pull of grief.
1:11:41 > 1:11:44The poem, where that come from I don't know,
1:11:44 > 1:11:49but it's sunt lacrimae rerum, as Virgil says.
1:11:49 > 1:11:55Our mortality involves weeping and you better ready yourself for it.
1:11:57 > 1:12:00"Before the kite plunges down into the wood
1:12:00 > 1:12:04"and this line goes useless, take it in your two hands, boys,
1:12:04 > 1:12:09"and feel the strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.
1:12:09 > 1:12:11"You were born fit for it,
1:12:11 > 1:12:15"standing here in front of me. And take the strain."
1:12:22 > 1:12:26My attitude to death has eased considerably.
1:12:26 > 1:12:31When I was a child, and even into my early teens,
1:12:31 > 1:12:34the sense of the terror of judgment,
1:12:34 > 1:12:37the sense of...heaven and hell, the right hand of God,
1:12:37 > 1:12:41the left hand of God - depart, ye cursed, come, ye blessed -
1:12:41 > 1:12:45that was very much in the mind and in the imagination.
1:12:47 > 1:12:50That has mercifully disappeared.
1:12:52 > 1:12:58What hasn't gone away is the sense of readiness to change, to go over.
1:13:00 > 1:13:06I think all the great myths are consistent with what you need.
1:13:06 > 1:13:10You need a sense of moving on, crossing something,
1:13:10 > 1:13:13into the dark, fair enough, into the unknown.
1:13:14 > 1:13:20The great mythical stories of the after world are stories which
1:13:20 > 1:13:24stay with you and which ease you towards the end,
1:13:24 > 1:13:27towards a destination and transition.