Sir, – Seamus Heaney: “His coffin as befits a Giant seventy-four foot long. A foot for every year”. – Yours, etc,
DEREK SCANLAN,
Pleasants Street,
Portobello, Dublin 8.
Sir, – I was reading James Harpur’s wonderful article (“Romantic Ireland: poetry on newsprint”, August 30th) when I heard the sad news of the death of a genius, Seamus Heaney, and I too “coughed out angry, tearless sighs”.
Only two weeks ago, our visiting son was helping me change the sheets for his bed and our hands touched. He looked at me and said “Seamus Heaney”. It was a magic moment.
May he rest in peace. – Yours, etc,
NORA SCOTT
Off Whitehall Road,
Churchtown,
Dublin 14.
A chara, – The City Council is about to decide on the name for the new bridge over the Liffey. Who better to honour than Seamus Heaney?
Since we heard of his untimely death we have learned about the his kindness, humility, warmth, and dignity. What an example of how to bridge greatness with humanity? Indeed he was a bridge in many other ways, between Ireland and Britain, North and South, Derry and Wicklow, honesty and peacefulness.
A dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis. – Is mise,
Prof CATHAL M BRUGHA,
University College Dublin,
Belfield,
Dublin 4.
Sir, – On the last day of August – the day after Seamus Heaney died – I was at hurling training. There must have been a hundred people there, five-year-olds to teenagers, many parents and mentors. Nobody mentioned his name. There was talk of the club lotto, All-Ireland hurling tickets, the weather, attire; a seven-year-old wanted to know when the emigrant free-taker was returning. Patrick Kavanagh wrote, “Gods make their own importance”. – Yours, etc,
JOSEPH MACKEY,
Glasson,Athlone.
Sir, – Amid all the excellent and well-deserved tributes to Seamus Heaney in Saturday's paper, I missed any reference to what was his first, and, as testified to by his remarks in Dennis O'Driscoll's Stepping Stones, deeply influential visit to the United States, his year as a visiting lecturer in the University of California at Berkeley, in 1970/1. It was there that I first met him, and I can testify that it was a very significant time for him. To ignore it is to dismiss the importance for him of such friends as Thomas Flanagan (who got him over there), Robert Tracy, and Leonard Michaels, as well as many other poets that he met there, such as Robert Bly, Gary Snyder, and Czeslaw Milosz.
He returned in spring of 1976, this time as Beckman Professor, and at various times subsequently, and he always retained his affection for those Berkeley days, as did Marie. – Yours, etc,
JOHN DILLON,
Thormanby Road,
Howth,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – Two words I always associated with Seamus Heaney: kindness and wisdom. I think, in his case at least, those words mean the same thing. May he rest in peace. – Yours, etc,
DONAL O’KEEFFE,
Fermoy, Co Cork.
Sir, – I was introduced to Mid-Term Break in a small primary school in Rosemount and remain in awe of Seamus Heaney.
Years later, I still turn to written word to articulate how I feel, particularly since the death of my baby last November. I am frustrated by the usual procrastination that stopped me from writing to Seamus Heaney to express my gratitude for Elegy for a Stillborn Child. Although he wrote for himself, he comforts me. – Yours, etc,
KAREN JAMES
Serpentine Terrace,
Sandymount, Dublin 4.
Sir, – Many of my colleagues in poetry and journalism have paid tribute to the generosity of spirit of Seamus Heaney. I, too, can testify to that generosity. When the Irish Press management locked out the Press journalists in the summer of 1995, I contacted Seamus, who was preparing to leave for a holiday in Greece, and I asked him to read at a Gala Benefit Concert and poetry reading that I was organising in the Project Arts Centre in Dublin. He immediately agreed to do so.
A week later, the Swedish Nobel Committee announced that Seamus had won their prize for literature for that year. Although the world’s media were now chasing Seamus Heaney and he was in great demand to do interviews and to give poetry readings, he honoured his promise to attend the Project Theatre event. Not alone did give that reading on his return from Greece, he brought along his friend, the singer Davy Hammond, to liven up proceedings with his songs. He was joined on the stage by the poet Michael Longley, who had also accepted my invitation to read for the Press journalists. It was the first public event carried out by Seamus Heaney after the announcement that he had won the Nobel Prize. Ar dheis lamh Dé go raibh a anam dílis. – Yours, etc,
HUGH McFADDEN,
Clareville Road, Dublin 6W.
Sir, – Twelve years ago a book of mine was published entitled The Irish Soul: In Dialogue and I had written to Seamus Heaney, whose poetry I much admired and continue to read, asking could I interview him for it, to which he replied: "This Irish soul has been interviewed into silence". It was the best rejection I received! Like Beckett, Heaney has left a stain upon the silence of the world. What a stain. Requiescat in pace. – Yours, etc,
Dr STEPHEN J COSTELLO,
Director, Viktor Frankl
Institute of Ireland,
Dartmouth Road, Dublin 6.
Sir, – I once told Seamus Heaney that I regarded him as the second Sandymount-man to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He chuckled and said in his countryman’s way, “I never thought of it that way”. – Yours, etc,
ANTHONY J JORDAN,
Gilford Road,
Sandymount, Dublin 4.
Sir, – Following the death of another literary giant, a local lady was quoted as saying that she never met McGahern but he was a lovely man.
I think that sums up how we all feel about Seamus Heaney. – Yours, etc,
JOHN McDWYER,
Chairman,
The Dock Arts Centre,
Carrick on Shannon,
Co Leitrim.
Sir, – I had the privilege of walking with and talking to the late Seamus Heaney for a very short time after a reading in the Law Society Dublin last September.
I asked him if he had to take only one of his poems to a desert island, which one would he take. He said he had never been asked that before. He then hesitated before replying that he would take the one which reminded him most of his father, Digging. "But I have no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb/ The squat pen rests/I'll dig with it".
A great man. May he rest in peace. – Yours, etc,
NORVILLE CONNOLLY,
Castlebellingham,
Co Louth.
Sir , – I am saddened. As a nation we are a man down. – Yours, etc,
FRANK MUNNELLY
Downings South,
Prosperous,
Co Kildare.
A chara, – Apart from the legacy of beautiful words that Seamus Heaney has gifted to us all, I have a precious, personal memory of this wonderful wordsmith. It is one that reveals the mischievous, playful side of his nature.
In my 20s, I worked for an old school-friend of Heaney’s (they called each other by surnames – a throwback to schooldays, no doubt) – the office was close to the poet’s Dublin home. The friendship that began as young schoolboys was still being shared as adults through common interests – one of which was horse-racing.
Today, arranging to meet friends after work is easily done via text message but then the only way was to call the office. In a spirit of schoolboy giddiness, Heaney sometimes identified himself as someone in the public eye. I might have been taken in the first time this happened were it not for the fact that on that occasion, Heaney asked me, in his mellifluous-toned Derry accent, to tell my boss that “Luca Cumani is on the phone”.
Cumani was (and still is) an internationally renowned Italian thoroughbred horse trainer – something I only knew as my father was also a keen horse- racing fan. Straight-faced nevertheless, I transferred the call. The door to the office being closed could not drown out the raucous guffaws of laughter that spread through the building – the noise from Heaney’s side of the line being equally audible.
I subsequently had the pleasure of answering more calls to my boss from Heaney – his chosen “identity” being ever more outrageously impossible each time. – Is mise,
CAROLINE McGEE,
Killiney Road,
Killiney,
Co Dublin.
A chara, – A State funeral, after the honour rightly bestowed on Yeats, seems in the circumstances to be a minimum tribute from the nation, and diaspora.
I met Seamus only twice, and very briefly. I attended several readings which were captivating and uplifting. I am sure like all who met him will testify, he wore his genius very lightly, his charm and kindness easily
I declare an interest, as a former pupil of St Columb’s College, Derry, and a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast. Any similarities between the Nobel Laureate and I, beyond those, are minimal. – Is mise,
JOHN COYLE,
The Sycamores,
Rathmullan,
Co Donegal.
Sir, – Seamus Heaney crossed the sectarian divide in a still-divided Northern Ireland, or the North of Ireland, as he may have preferred. He was unashamedly nationalist but equally respectful of the unionist tradition. He represented the pluralism and inclusion of John Hewitt and others who refused to be simply labelled, and he spurned being used politically.
Thirty-four years ago, when I was 27, giving a series of lectures on the Northern conflict at Harvard’s John F Kennedy school of government, he spoke at my final class and did what he was superb at – reciting his poetry. We met several times during that 1978-1979 year when he had taken the chair of poetry. We respected one another’s political views because we were tolerant and respectful of the “other” community which we hoped would share a common friendship in the future.
Seamus was Irish first, a Northerner second. I was a Northerner first, and, equally, British and Irish. He eschewed pressure to take public stances on tribal issues, and rightly so. He let his poetry speak for him. Seamus’s great early encourager at his publishers, Faber & Faber, was a great Ulsterman, Charles Monteith, Fellow of All Souls at Oxford, formerly wounded in the Irish Guards, and firmly unionist but never sectarian. Other great encouragers and friends of Seamus were Conor Cruise O’Brien and his wife Maire Mac an tSaoi of whom he was fond and with whom we shared a common friendship. Seamus’s poetry had a voice representative of his own community; John Hewitt’s likewise. But there were commonalities in their poems which spanned the cultural gap.
I treasure still my rare signed and annotated copy of Seamus’s elegy to Robert Lowell, also taken from us at a too early age. I had plied him with one too many Bushmills that day in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He wrote: “ Thanks for the hospitality, or should I say, the ‘dose’!” Seamus was a man for all seasons. He is a loss to North and South and universally. – Yours, etc.
MICHAEL HC
McDOWELL,
Stuyvesant Place,
NW Chevy Chase,
Washington, DC, US.
Sir, – Did the world stop turning there for a moment? Rest in peace, Seamus, your digging is done. – Yours, etc,
JOHN THREADGOLD,
Pollerton Little, Carlow.