Four Sides of Seamus Heaney, Radio 4
He won the Nobel Prize in Literature, he was one of the greatest poets writing in the English language, but Seamus Heaney was ours first.
The Four Sides of Seamus Heaney on Radio 4 reflects on his life and work on the 10th anniversary of his death.
Broadcaster, writer and poet John Kelly – himself a northerner – looks at Heaney, the poet of place: a man rooted in County Derry, the well spring of so many of his finest poems.
And if you think this might be uber-poetic or high falutin’ or students of literature material, then think again.
We are welcomed in a relaxed way with John Kelly sharing a bench in the poet’s native Bellaghy with Heaney’s brother Dan.
Kelly knew the poet but before he met him, he knew his poems, how they spoke directly to our lived experience; how they offered a whole new wonderment in what was, to us, familiar territory.
It’s a joy to hear again Seamus Heaney reading Digging – it’s a poem that is so familiar.
But here was something new. Dan said that his brother was up in Bellaghy when the statue of a turf cutter was placed there in his honour.
He said Seamus recalled that he was driving home one time after visiting his wife-to-be, Marie, in Ardboe and had to change gears a few times just at that spot in the road.
The change made him think about the shift in generations from grandfather to father to son… the genesis and spark for what was to become the poem Digging.
So it was a happy coincidence that the statue of the turfcutter went up at that very spot.
There are poignant moments including a return to the place on the lough shore where the poet imagined meeting his cousin who was murdered in the Troubles.
How rooted Heaney was in his homeland: “He never really left the parish,” said Dan.
This is a beautiful series in the hands of people versed in both Heaney and his work.
You can hear his daughter Catherine talk about her father as a love poet – tracing love in all its guises.
Gail McConnell explores the poet in relation to the Troubles.
Just hearing Seamus Heaney reading his own poems aloud is reason enough to listen – but each of the presenters shines a unique light on his work.
