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Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney was in town this week and Litro Editor Tom Chivers fought the flu to be at the Wyndham Theatre to hear the great man in conversation with Mark Lawson (off the telly).
The sold-out event was occasioned by the publication of Stepping Stones, a kind of biography/autobiography hybrid. Heaney’s long-time friend and interviewer for the book, Dennis O’Driscoll, was also in attendance and offered some interesting thoughts on Heaney, his work and the process of compiling the book. What we all know as Heaney’s great humanity, both as a writer and speaker, was captured nicely by O’Driscoll as a kind of rural “neighbourliness”. Spot on.
Critics once criticised Heaney for political fence-sitting, an accusation he has since largely shaken off. But what is interesting about the way he talks is the way he tends to drift off at the end of sentences, away from straight eloquence and into vague abstractions… “So there we have it,” is one of his catchphrases. Yes, maybe he does avoid conclusions—easy or otherwise—but this is also a reminder of what poetry itself does: not so much revelation, but leading us out of the dark, into light, then back into darkness again.
Heaney is primarily a musician of words. At one point, he shrugged off academic interrogation of the famous metaphor “snug as a gun” (from “Digging”), instead suggesting he just liked the sound of the words together. He does have a beautiful speaking voice, topping off the night with a captivating reading of “The Miracle”.
The audience was a strange mix—pensioners, middle-aged literati, and “Heaney boppers”. On the way out I overheard a conversation between a group of students: “I love Seamus Heaney! I just want him to give me a hug!”
Not exactly a night with the Werther’s Original grandpa, but something quite magical nonetheless.
