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13 Apr 09 - 02:48 PM (#2610316) Subject: BS: Heaney all day From: Thompson Seamus Heaney is reading his entire output of poetry today on RTE Radio 1 Extra |
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13 Apr 09 - 03:13 PM (#2610336) Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day From: Leadfingers Its his 70th Birthday ! |
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13 Apr 09 - 04:14 PM (#2610389) Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day From: Thompson Happy birthday to He Happy birthday to He Happy birthday to Heaney Happy birthday to He |
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13 Apr 09 - 04:21 PM (#2610397) Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day From: Thompson Weirdly, it seems to have stopped and been replaced with yowling and yodelling, as of 9pm or so (Irish time), both on RTE Radio 1 Extra and RTE Radio 1 on long wave. |
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13 Apr 09 - 04:32 PM (#2610403) Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day From: GUEST,Gillian Over rated and put anyone to sleep. |
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13 Apr 09 - 04:41 PM (#2610414) Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day From: Thompson Requiem for the Croppies The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley... No kitchens on the run, no striking camp... We moved quick and sudden in our own country. The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp. A people hardly marching... on the hike... We found new tactics happening each day: We'd cut through reins and rider with the pike And stampede cattle into infantry, Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown. Until... on Vinegar Hill... the final conclave. Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon. The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave. They buried us without shroud or coffin And in August... the barley grew up out of our grave. |
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13 Apr 09 - 04:47 PM (#2610423) Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day From: Thompson And another - his poem Clonmacnoise: The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise Were all at prayers inside the oratory A ship appeared above them in the air. The anchor dragged along behind so deep It hooked itself into the altar rails And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill, A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope And struggled to release it. But in vain. 'This man can't bear our life here and will drown,' The abbot said, 'unless we help him.' So They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back Out of the marvellous as he had known it. |
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13 Apr 09 - 05:12 PM (#2610440) Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day From: Art Thieme Is he a relative of Joe Heaney's? |
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13 Apr 09 - 05:17 PM (#2610442) Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day From: Thompson Doubt it. Just a Nobel Prize winning poet |
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13 Apr 09 - 05:22 PM (#2610445) Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day From: katlaughing Thanks for the link. I've not read his stuff before. Am enjoying listening. |
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13 Apr 09 - 05:36 PM (#2610456) Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day From: Thompson Here's another, which he's just been reading. He takes off from the image of the bog body in PV Glob's book Bog People - a woman that Glob conjectured had been executed for adultery - and brings it back to another kind of adultery: the Northern Ireland girls from nationalist communities who had their heads shaved and tarred and were left tied to railings because they were the lovers of British soldiers, and so seen as traitors holding a threat of informing: Punishment I can feel the tug of the halter at the nape of her neck, the wind on her naked front. It blows her nipples to amber beads, it shakes the frail rigging of her ribs. I can see her drowned body in the bog, the weighing stone, the floating rods and boughs. Under which at first she was a barked sapling that is dug up oak-bone, brain-firkin: her shaved head like a stubble of black corn, her blindfold a soiled bandage, her noose a ring to store the memories of love. Little adultress, before they punished you you were flaxen-haired, undernourished, and your tar-black face was beautiful. My poor scapegoat, I almost love you but would have cast, I know, the stones of silence. I am the artful voyeur of your brain's exposed and darkened combs, your muscles' webbing and all your numbered bones: I who have stood dumb when your betraying sisters, cauled in tar, wept by the railings, who would connive in civilized outrage yet understand the exact and tribal, intimate revenge. |
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13 Apr 09 - 06:02 PM (#2610477) Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day From: Amos Jaysus, Rightly won, that Nobel. A |
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16 Apr 09 - 04:16 AM (#2612246) Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day From: Thompson And one more: Mid-Term Break, about the death of his brother: I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. At ten o'clock our neighbours drove me home. In the porch I met my father crying - He had always taken funerals in his stride - And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram When I came in, and I was embarrased By old men standing up to shake my hand And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'; Whispers informed strangers that I was the eldest, Away at school, as my mother held my hand In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. At ten o'closk the ambulance arrived With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses. Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him For the first time in six weeks. Paler now, Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple. He lay in a four foot box, as in his cot. No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear. A four foot box, a foot for every year. |
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16 Apr 09 - 04:33 AM (#2612250) Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day From: ard mhacha Poor Gillian,you don`t have to be a professor to see the genius in the man, over rated?, God help your wit. |
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16 Apr 09 - 04:51 AM (#2612257) Subject: RE: BS: Heaney all day From: ard mhacha Another poem by Heaney, Digging. Between my finger and my thumbThe squat pen rests: snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping soundWhen the spade sinks into gravelly ground:My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbedsBends low, comes up twenty years awayStooping in rhythm through potato drillsWhere he was digging. The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaftAgainst the inside knee was levered firmly.He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deepTo scatter new potatoes that we pickedLoving their cool hardness in our hands. By God the old man could handle a spade.Just like his old man. My grandfather cut more turf in a dayThan any other man on Toner's bog.Once I carried him milk in a bottleCorked sloppily with paper. He straightened upTo drink it, then fell to right away Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sodsOver his shoulder, going down and downFor the good turf. Digging. The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slapOf soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edgeThrough living roots awaken in my head.But I've no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumbThe squat pen rests.I'll dig with it. |