Sunday Miscellany, RTÉ Radio 1
Of all the tributes and programmes marking the tenth anniversary of Seamus Heaney’s death, this Sunday Miscellany touched a chord.
It was a magical series of reflections and music that got to the soul of the man.
We heard from him too, looking back on that day when he took courage in both hands, resigned from Queen’s University and settled to his life’s vocation – job title: file (the Irish word) or poet.
Each of the contributors had their own story.
Writer Grace Wells knows the poem Postscript by heart.
It used to hang on the wall at the departure lounge of Dublin airport. She’d read it again and again, as she heralded small children to visit family across the sea, as she struggled with a dissolving marriage.
“Even in my sadness, it managed to reach me and give me shelter.”
So that when a young refugee got up and spoke a poem in a foreign tongue at a gathering in the west of Ireland, not a word did she understand but that same power she felt.
Poet Gerald Dawe told the story of a handwritten note from Seamus Heaney.
It was in his pocket on a trip to Donegal in 1974 that necessitated the crossing of an army checkpoint on Derry’s Craigavon Bridge.
When asked for proof of identity, he had no student card, no national insurance card, but he pulled out the letter and said it was from one of Ireland’s best known and highly regarded poets… “Miraculously, we were free to go on our way.”
Poet Denise Blake’s Seamus Heaney Story began with her own awakening reading and hearing his work: “The kindling I had carried into Magee College was set alight and I began writing poetry."
But it was an evening and a gathering in Donegal when she got up to read before the great poet himself that stays with her.
Her nerves got the better of her.
Then, from the back of the hall, came the voice of the man himself: “You’re doing grand, Denise, you’re doing grand.”
And on she went.
The final offering is a reading by Marie Heaney of one of her favourite poems by her husband: “Tate’s Avenue”.
The music is equally haunting and beautiful.. from Liam O’Flynn to Pete Seeger.
You’ll find this on the RTÉ player – just listen.
