Sir, – I met Seamus Heaney in the 1960s, when I was an undergraduate of Queen’s University, Belfast. Over the years I bumped into him the odd time in Dublin and he always made the time to stop and chat. The last time I saw him I asked what he was up to. His exact reply was: “Ah, just fiddling about.” We could all learn from his humility. – Yours, etc,
ROSEMARY GRAHAM,
Muldowney Court,
Malahide, Co Dublin.
Sir, – In 2005 I was writing a book about the 1975 sectarian murders of Sean Farmer and Colm McCartney, a cousin of Seamus Heaney’s. With a degree of trepidation I wrote to Seamus asking whether he would agree to be interviewed, in particular about his poetic treatments of the killings. His response and the kindness he subsequently showed towards me were both unforgettable and humbling. After meeting me at the Dart station he took me to his home, poured himself a large bowl of cornflakes, sprinkled them liberally with sugar, and began to talk. The hours that followed were, and are, something to treasure. – Yours, etc,
DES FAHY,
Rosetta Avenue, Belfast.
Sir, – In 1974 I started work in RTÉ as a producer, radio. One of my first assignments was a series of half-hour programmes called Personal Choice scheduled for Sunday night listening. Guests were invited to choose their personal likes in music, poetry, prose. One such was Seamus Heaney: a young man who had recently come to live in a Wicklow cottage with his wife, Marie. To write in solitude, doubtless, unhindered. He had left behind him at Queen’s University, Belfast, a secure career. To make a living writing poetry, I wondered. Needless to say, he performed in studio with hardly a hitch and his personal choice was well received when broadcast that summer. How did I find him? Quiet, unassuming, humble with a wry sense of humour. At the reception area in the Radio Centre we shook hands and I wished him good luck. I turned away, wondering would he make it! – Yours, etc,
SEAN WALSH,
Achill Road,
Drumcondra, Dublin 9.
Sir, – Anthony Jordan (September 2nd) is incorrect in claiming Seamus Heaney as a Sandymount man on the basis of residence. The late poet’s house is in the part of Strand Road that is in Merrion, not Sandymount. – Yours, etc,
CHARLES LYSAGHT,
Strand Road,
Merrion,
Dublin 4.
Sir, – The squat pen rests. – Yours, etc,
PETER GUNNING,
Laurel Court,
Midleton,
Co Cork.
Sir, – When I heard of the untimely death of Seamus Heaney my immediate reaction was one of shock and loss. John Kelly said on the Myles Dungan show, “I will miss his voice”. So will I. In the midst of our political, economic and social morass, he was a beacon of hope. A giant with a quiet humility and a penetrating sense of humour. A rare Irishman for us to be truly proud of. – Yours, etc,
GERRY de BRIT,
Killinick, Wexford.
Sir, – Some years ago, at Listowel Writers’ Week, Seamus Heaney gave a genuine Bellaghy laugh when I told him the following true story. A friend of mine owned a shop at the junction of Hawkins Street and Poolbeg Street, in Dublin. One day the Nobel laureate went in and made a purchase. When he left the following dialogue took place between the shopkeeper and his young female shop assistant, Shopkeper: That was Seamus Heaney. Shop assistant Seamus who? Shopkeeper: Do you realise that is like if James Joyce came into the shop? Shop assistant: James who? – Yours, etc,
MATTIE LENNON,
Lacken,
Blessington, Co Wicklow.
Sir, – Seamus Heaney is our true Filíocht – the giver of tales, capturing memories across divides. His words trembling like a tuning fork, poised and accurately tuneful, hitting that note that we quietly take home, to covet. I believe he spoke for us, offering images we could grasp of ourselves, when history and media worked as spin-doctors to tell different tales. He told it as it was. No holes barred. He invited us to look closer into our own wells, into our own brickyards, and to be startled by “a rat slapping across my reflection”.
I believe, we are fortunate to have had this humble ambassador offer us gifts, through his words, of our present, our past. Words, like touchstones, reaching for a sense of home.
It is wonderful that a poet is recognised in their lifetime I grew up in an era where the poets I studied in school for the most part were already dead!
Our Government should create a Filíocht na hÉireann in his honour and celebrate the beauty of poetry and his contribution to our wonderful oral tradition in telling tales through rhyme. No better time. No greater man to honour. – Yours, etc,
ORLA KENNEDY,
Newpark Road,
Blackrock, Co Dublin.
Sir, – While acknowledging the passing of the poet Seamus Heaney which was given extensive coverage on RTÉ’s Six One news on August 30th, methinks that the eulogies went a bit far when placing the Derry poet in same company as Joyce,Yeats and Shaw. – Yours, etc,
DEREK HENRY CARR,
Harcourt Terrace,
Dublin 2 .
Sir, – We have lost Seamus Heaney to the very earth about which he spoke so eloquently. Unlike his young brother Christopher, whose life’s journey was measured in feet, Seamus’s can be measured in miles – thousands of them – all invariably leading back to his native county of Derry even in death.
His earthy words transcended and crossed all borders – both physical and religious.In my mind’s eye he sits among those other poets born out of the bleak northern soil – Yeats, McGahern, Mac Neice, Kavanagh and Goldsmith – strange but interesting bedfellows indeed. – Yours, etc,
AIDAN HAMPSON,
Whitethorn Rise,
Artane,
Dublin.
Sir, – On the death of John Millington Synge, Yeats wrote of “the best labourer dead, and all the sheaves to bind”.
In the past days we bade farewell to one of our best labourers. Throughout the country others labour at kitchen tables, in libraries, in workshops and studios. Local historians dig out and preserve stories of the Irish collective, for love of the work alone. Drama students cobble funds together to stage productions, fuelled by creativity and the confidence of youth. As Seamus Heaney is mourned, it is worth considering the status of the humanities in Ireland. What is the value put upon them – not by those who labour within such disciplines – but by the custodians of our culture, heritage, education?
We cannot measure or quantify in man hours and money the true benefit to a nation of human thought and discourse. History and hope will not rhyme for those generations to whom the subject of history is denied in the early years of secondary school. Universities should not fall to CEO-like management, which considers the value of academic endeavour by the per capita research endowments it creates.
We are in danger in this country of witnessing – to paraphrase Yeats – the fools’ triumph. Vigorous, creative, argumentative, independent thought is beyond price. It gives a nation its character. It needs to be cultivated by the agencies of the State, not deprived of nourishment, or the spaces in which it might grow. This is our nation, our heritage, our intellectual future.
When will we ensure that the short-sighted fools do not triumph? – Yours, etc,
KAREN McDONNELL,
Ballyvaughan,
Co Clare.
Sir, – Seamus Heaney, a poet, a Nobel Laureate, but he always wore his roots. “Between my finger and my thumb the squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it”. – Yours, etc,
MAUREEN DALY,
Tudor Lawns,
Foxrock,
Dublin 18.
Sir, – He went gently into that dark night. – Yours etc,
JIM GAMMONS,
Murmod,
Virginia, Co Cavan.
A chara, – On Friday when I heard on the car radio that he had died, I pulled over, and wept with a strange gasping sob, as if part of a larger convulsion that swept the planet as news of the poet’s death spread.
Later in the afternoon I met a neighbour and asked if he had heard that Seamus Heaney had died. “Seamus who? Was he a neighbour? Should I know him?”
He told me a joke from Mrs Brown's Boys, which he thought hilarious.
I started to sob again, he thought at the joke, but I, at the loss of a voice that had spoken of the separateness of the human condition. "Since there is no map which draws the line he knows he must have crossed." (The Haw Lantern, 1987). – Is mise,
S O’ FLOINN,
Skehard Road,
Cork.
Sir, – I greatly appreciated Fintan O’Toole’s tribute to Seamus Heaney (Front page, August 31st), especially his articulation of the gratitude which so many feel towards this great man/poet. Seamus Heaney did indeed help us plot a way through the darkness of what we call “The Troubles”, not least by rescuing language from all the propagandists who attempted to appropriate it and reduce him and us to the prison of tribal chants or fearful silence.
I would respectfully offer an additional observation: Heaney reinstated the validity of rural life as a fit subject for modern poetry and redefined the public image of the modern artist. This earthy, kind, generous, unaffected person, and the charity of his poems, was completely at odds with the tortured, angst-ridden persona of those afflicted with, or indulging in, a post-modern sensibility; artists whose work seems to know little of humour or compassion beyond the dark, cynical snigger – a supposedly necessary “style” if one is to have one’s work validated as relevant and therefore worthwhile. He resisted this type of confinement too.
Fintan O’Toole finishes his moving piece by referring to Seamus Heaney’s grace, a most appropriate word in light of the many undeserved blessings which he has bestowed on us. The blessings of his words will go on, like his Blackbird of Glanmore, “filling the stillness with life”. – Yours, etc,
EAMON SHEPPARD,
Foxes Grove,
Shankill,
Co Dublin.