Seamus Heaney: a life in rhyme

Robert McCrum has a long interview with Seamus Heaney in today's Observer magazine, called 'A Life in Rhyme':-

For someone who has been so remorselessly scrutinised, Heaney is still something of an enigma. He works hard to make "famous" seem normal. Unfailingly courteous and attentive, he can also be grave, remote and occasionally stern, always watching himself, like the king of a vulnerable monarchy.

In keeping with that vigilance, and a well-defended uncertainty, Heaney is always asking himself the essential questions articulated in Preoccupations, his collected essays. "How should a poet properly live and write? What is his relationship to be to his own voice, his own place, his literary heritage and his contemporary world?"

Read the full article here.

Podcast 14: Henry James's 'The Portrait of a Lady'

Our final podcast of this academic year, just in time for some satisfying holiday reading, is an interview with former colleague John Fanagan, who discusses Henry James's great 1881 novel The Portrait of a Lady. Set in England and Italy, the book examines the progress of the innocent American young woman Isabel Archer, as she comes into contact with the ways of an older civilisation. John discusses other characters in the novel, such as Ralph Touchett, Lord Warburton, Madame Merle, Henrietta Stacpoole and the dark Gilbert Osmond. There's a spoiler warning before the last few minutes of the podcast, in which the infamous ending is discussed, so if you haven't already read the novel, you might like to pause it then, and return later.

(This is also the 700th post on SCC English).
Listen to the podcast via the player below:

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You can also listen to our podcasts via the 'widget' on the sidebar to the right, or by visiting our podcast page here (if you have iTunes on your computer you can also subscribe by clicking here, and so download our episodes to your MP3 player, or by searching for 'SCC English' in the iTunes Store).

Podcast 12: The Great Hunger - MacIntyre, Kavanagh, Jameson

Our 12th podcast is an interview with Department member Evan Jameson, about the highly successful part he look in the Balally Players' production of Tom MacIntyre's The Great Hunger, his 1983 adaptation of the epic poem by Patrick Kavanagh (the first part of the poem is on the Leaving Certificate course). We reviewed this here six months ago.

Evan discusses the rehearsal process for this very physical piece of drama, the nature of the writing itself, and the experience of going to amateur drama festivals around the country, culminating in the All-Ireland finals in Athlone last month, where the production achieved 4th place.

Listen to the podcast via the player below:-

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You can also listen to our podcasts via the 'widget' on the sidebar to the right, or by visiting our podcast page here (if you have iTunes on your computer you can also subscribe by clicking here, and so download our episodes to your MP3 player, or by searching for 'SCC English' in the iTunes Store).

Terry Dolan on Geoffrey Chaucer

At the start of this month, we put up a podcast discussion with Professor Terry Dolan about the great Middle English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. An edited transcript of this interview will be published in the Library magazine 'The Submarine' before this term ends. Meanwhile, click here for the transcript, and here to go back to the podcast.

Podcast 9: Louise C.Callaghan - an interview and reading

We're delighted to present an extended interview with the poet Louise C. Callaghan, who discusses her poetry, and reads several poems. Included is 'The Binder's Notes', the poem for which Louise was shortlisted at the recent Strokestown International Poetry Festival, and which you can read here on their website.

Louise also reads poems such as 'The Palatine Daughter Marries a Catholic', 'Fragments', 'The Trader's Magneto Dynamo Company' and 'The Trick Is', and discusses the origins of her writing, and the methods she uses to encourage children to write. She will be visiting the College for workshops with I form pupils over the next week or so.

Below is her poem 'Colophon', which is a companion piece to 'The Binder's Notes', and which she read at Strokestown; this illuminates the chief damage to the Binder's manuscript, that of the guide-letters which have been cut out.

In her interview Louise kindly says how much enjoys visiting St Columba's, 'this place which is so friendly to poetry' (pictured, she reads in the Cadogan Building to pupils last year).


Colophon

A scholar in the Priory Library
cut right through the skin
of the Selected Saint Augustine,
removed two zoomorphic initials.

Centuries before, this one monk
when he'd finished copying
the Latin text, wrote
the following as his end-note:

If anyone deface this book let him die
the death. Let the falling sickness
take him, let him be broken
on the wheel, then hanged, Amen.

Listen to the podcast via the player below:-

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You can also listen to our podcasts via the 'widget' on the sidebar to the right, or by visiting our podcast page here (if you have iTunes on your computer you can also subscribe by clicking here, and so download our episodes to your MP3 player, or by searching for 'SCC English' in the iTunes Store).

Podcast 5: Geoffrey Chaucer - an interview with Terry Dolan

Our fifth podcast is an interview with Professor Terry Dolan, about the life and work of the great Middle English poet Geoffrey Chaucer and especially his masterpiece The Canterbury Tales. See today's earlier post for more about Terry Dolan.

To see The Canterbury Tales online, together with translations, go here. Books referred to in the interview, include Neville Coghill's translation of the Tales, Terry Jones's Chaucer's Knight: Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary, and Who Murdered Chaucer? by Terry Jones, Terry Dolan and others.

Listen to the podcast via the player below:-

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You can also listen to our podcasts via the 'widget' on the sidebar to the right, or by visiting our podcast page here (if you have iTunes on your computer you can also subscribe by clicking here, and so download our episodes to your MP3 player, or by searching for 'SCC English' in the iTunes Store).

Podcast 1 : Farewell Future Wives

Our first-ever podcast is an interview with our colleague Ronan Swift, the launch of whose first album Farewell Future Wives we reported on recently. It's a discussion about the nature of his song-writing, the relationship between words and music, his musical influences and much more, and is rounded off by Track 3 of the album, 'Dancing'.

This post marks our initial venture into podcasting, which we plan to do regularly from now on. We'll be recording interviews, items on books, a series on study topics and more. You can listen to our podcasts via the player at the bottom of each post, or the 'widget' on the sidebar to the right, or by visiting our podcast page here (if you have iTunes on your computer you can also subscribe by clicking here, and so download our episodes to your MP3 player). Enjoy!

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