Murray Jennings: A personal Heaney anecdote

I was introduced to the poems of Seamus Heaney only after he had been awarded the Nobel Prize. Somehow, I had failed to spot the genius in anthologies. Then my wife lent me his New Selected Poems 1966 – 1987 and late one night I opened it, turned immediately to the first poem, ‘Digging’, read it and read it again, almost in disbelief.

Here was a poem, perfect in my estimation, saying exactly, so succinctly, in rich and simple language, what I had tried to say in a poem I had drafted, with the same title.

One weekend afternoon, when I was about seventeen, seated at the desk in my bedroom, sketching, I had looked out the window and observed my father chopping at wild buffalo grass with a mattock. I felt guilty that I wasn’t out there, helping him.

That memory stayed with me for decades. When finally, I tried to create something with it, I transferred it to his father, inspired by a sepia photograph of him on the Kalgoorlie goldfields, standing, slightly stooped, leaning on a long-handled shovel next to his diggings.

The poem never developed beyond a second draft. And it doesn’t matter. I have abandoned it. I am happy enough to be sharing the emotions and recollections with a great poet who, quite simply, nailed it, where I hadn’t.

Sweet harmony. A perfect way into music and the best way in to the poetry of Seamus Heaney. Since then, having visited the Ireland of my ancestors and walked the rough ground, over peat and rocks, I am even better able to continue exploring his work.


Murray Jennings
September 1st, 2013

in memoriam of Seamus Heaney

The Kenyon Review is pleased to present

This week's Weekend Reads is in memoriam of Seamus Heaney, recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature.  From Spring 2001, New Series, Vol. XXIII, No. 2: Castalian Spring by Seamus Heaney Thunderface. Not Zeus's ire, but hers Refusing entry, and mine mounting from it. This one thing I had vowed: to drink the waters Of the Castalian Spring, to arrogate That much to myself and be the poet Under the god Apollo's giddy cliff-- But the inner water sanctum was roped off When we arrived. Well then, to hell with that, And to hell with all who'd stop me, thunderface! So up the steps then, into the sandstone grottoes, The seeps and dreeps, the shallow pools, the mosses, Come from beyond, and come far, with this useless Anger draining away, on terraces Where I bowed and mouthed in sweetness and defiance.  This poem was featured in a special issue of KR which celebrated a century of Nobel prizes. Click here to view the Editor's Notes and Table of Contents.

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More to Read:

Seamus Heaney, Nobel-Winning Poet, Dead at 74Wall Street Journal Irish poet Seamus Heaney, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995 and one of the 20th century's greatest poets, has died at age 74. Watch a recording of ... See all stories on this topic »	Wall Street Journal
Irish Poet and Nobel Winner Seamus Heaney Dies at 74TIME DUBLIN (AP) — Seamus Heaney, Ireland's foremost poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, died Friday after a half-century exploring the wild ... See all stories on this topic »
Seamus Heaney Dies: Famed Irish Poet, a Nobel Prize Winner, Was ...Newsmax.com Among Heaney's most famous poetry collections was his 1996 book of poems, "The Spirit Level," and later his 2006 "District and Circle" poetry collection, ... See all stories on this topic »
Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney diesSun-Sentinel DUBLIN (Reuters) - Seamus Heaney, one of the world's best-known poets and winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for literature, died on Friday after a short illness at ... See all stories on this topic »
Irish poet Seamus Heaney, winner of Nobel Prize, dead at 74MassLive.com Seamus Heaney, Ireland's beloved poet and scholar who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, has died in a Dublin hospital at the age of 74, according to ... See all stories on this topic »
Nobel prizewinning poet Seamus Heaney diesFinancial Times One of Ireland's greatest poets, Seamus Heaney, died aged 74 on Friday morning at a hospital in Dublin following a short illness. Heaney was awarded the ... See all stories on this topic »
Seamus Heaney: A Poet of In-BetweenNew Yorker (blog) It is no accident that Seamus Heaney's selected poems is titled “Opened Ground,” since writing poems for this most remarkable farm boy was a kind of digging: ... See all stories on this topic »	New Yorker (blog)
Nobel-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney dies at 74WAND His early work was rooted in vivid description of rural experience, such as in 1966's collection "Death of a Naturalist," when his poem "Digging" describes his ... See all stories on this topic »
Poet Seamus Heaney, keeper of the Irish essenceThe Globe and Mail Anative of Northern Ireland, Seamus Heaney, a Roman Catholic, was renowned for work that powerfully evoked the beauty and blood that together have come ... See all stories on this topic »	The Globe and Mail
Irish Poet Seamus Heaney: 1939-2013Paste Magazine Seamus Heaney, one of Ireland's most esteemed poets and recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature, has died following a short illness at age 74. Heaney ... See all stories on this topic »

Cordite: Hot Poetry News - Posts and Submissions

Cordite 43: MASQUE Now Live Submission to 44: GONDWANALAND still open   MASQUE guest-edited by Ann Vickery

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China Daily: Translators need to strike a balance

Nobel Prize laureate Mo Yan explores with Syrian-born poet Adonis the significant role of translation in today's literary world. Gong Lei / Xinhua

Cultural identity, the spirit of introspection and writers' mission are among the topics that Syrian-born poet Adonis explored with Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan and other Chinese writers, in a recent talk organized by Beijing Normal University International Writing Center.

Both Adonis and Mo Yan, who have an increasing international readership, concluded that the one factor which facilitates and hinders their efforts is translation.

Having nearly all his novels published in French and at least six in English, Mo Yan says he admires Adonis, a fluent speaker of Arabic and French, because he is involved in the translation himself, guaranteeing precision.

Mo Yan says today, Chinese writers' writing is frequently influenced by the increasing possibility of overseas publication.

It often leads to the subconscious sacrifice of the diversity of dialects, the uniqueness of cultural expressions and the smoothness of writing itself, simply to facilitate the translation, he adds.

"From the perspective of literature and art, it's undoubtedly a huge loss. My attitude is, forget the translators when you write. Care not about whether they feel happy to translate. The real talented translators aren't afraid of difficulties," he says.

"It's not right either to require translators to be completely faithful because the search of a linguistic counterpart is a creation itself, full of imagination. I tend to be open-minded with the translators. I think we should allow them to trim the book appropriately on condition that it doesn't affect the gist as a whole."

Adonis agrees, adding it's even more difficult to translate a poem.

Poetry is more than a structure of language, he says, but also that of thinking and emotions. In terms of the relationship between concept, language and object, he adds, no two languages are on an equal footing.

"Therefore, translators of poems must break the original relationship between language and object, and establish a similar relationship and structure applicable to the translator's mother language," he says.

"In this case, translating poems means betrayal. But sometimes the translator has to betray (the original language) to be faithful to readers of his mother tongue. In other words, betrayal is part of loyalty."

As difficult as it is, translation of foreign literature and poetry, in Adonis' opinion, is a way to explore the mentality of "the others" at a deep level. The importance of translation is, he says, to serve as "the most fundamental element of world culture in the future".

"The importance also lies in the language that a translator uses, especially one that he uses while translating poems. It can enrich his mother tongue. To some extent, it can change the structure of his mother language," Adonis says.

hanbingbin@chinadaily.com.cn

A Hammer With Which to Shape Reality: Kit Kelen Launches ‘It Comes from All Directions: New and Selected Poems’ by Rae Desmond Jones.

Kit Kelen launched It Comes from All Directions – New and Selected Poems (published by Grand Parade Poets) on 11 August 2013 at the Summer Hill Hotel. The 11 August was also Rae Desmond Jones’ birthday.

Well firstly, Happy Birthday to Rae. (All sing ‘Happy Birthday’)

Singing to the arid stars!

I’m honoured to have the opportunity to praise this book today – and when Rae asked me to do the honours, it wasn’t so much that I relished getting onto the encomium mill, it was that I thought ‘I get to read lines of Rae’s that I like and I get to read them the way I like’, so that’s what I’ll mainly do.

Rae and I go back a long way; in fact, Rae, I believe, holds the record for holding one of my poems (juvenilia naturally) the longest before publishing (somewhere between five and ten years). I have considered forgiving him – not for holding it but for publishing it – but I’ve thought better of this. The time is not right. We are, after all, both still alive.

So to read a few favourites and favoured fragments. First ‘The Poets’ – words of the seventies as true today as they will be tomorrow.

The Poets

they speak to a vast audience
consisting mainly of one another
all of whom nervously shuffle
manuscripts & wait their turn

meantime the masses who are
as usual blind deaf & stupid
just keep walking to the bus or
into the office reading newspapers
& quite obviously don’t give a fuck,

& who can blame them?
for of course they have real
problems, the problems of carrying
on the business of carefully
& unselfconsciously

living & dying & paying off the
telly getting tired disillusioned
& old but nonetheless keeping
the nose to the grindstone etc.,

but if one should by some incredible
mischance happen to actually read
one of the poems published
as an occasional cultural piece

but not too prominently
in the corner of the review page
of one of our Saturday morning papers,
he nods, baffled, & turns back to
the real problem he has of the second
mortgage or thinks about his wife

swollen with the third
or the legs of the office girl
so tightly clenched he thinks
her pussy must almost pucker &
blow him kisses

but rarely he might think
at how unreal the world has
become & how beautiful & how
soon he must leave it which is

also beautiful & how time
passes but in any case perhaps
just for a minute he thinks
poetry & knows himself
dwarfish, blind & ugly &
returns once again to the real.

Elsewhere Rae tells us the poets are the ones with the little knives hidden in the pages of their manuscripts. Homer, Rae tells us, was this blind old fart wandering about singing and banging on a garbage tin lid. And what is poetry? For Rae, it’s Brecht’s not the mirror held up to reality but the hammer with which to shape reality. Thinking of different realities, of the différend between them, I’d like to read Rae’s ‘Decline and Fall’ – title poem of a recent book and the ultimate high school teacher’s poem, which, Leunig-like, I know, with the aid of magnet, adorned many a teacher’s fridge, especially in the later eighties.

Decline and Fall

i hate them
the truth is out! & they hate me.

them, the barbarians in baseball hats,
twisting in chairs lined up in artificial order,
and carving their loathing on the tabletops.

do you know why the roman empire fell? i ask.
who cares? a boy giggles.
that is the reason, i say.

you are old & fat, they say.
they are young & fat, I don’t say.
because i don’t want them to get healthy.

they can stay ugly and stupid so i can despise them.

why envy the awkward root they didn’t have
or their perfect wet dreams pearling
……….on the television screen?

outside the aluminium rimmed window
a crow strops his beak against a tree trunk
so that it will be sharp to dig
soft white worms from the dark earth.
i yearn for that brutal freedom.

the students resist my will although their heads bow,
broken for a second.
the room constricts us all.
i almost say get out.
go back to your bad videos & your hopeless dreams:
be unemployable.

daub graffiti on trains
& put as many needles in your arms as you want.
die if it seems romantic.

let there be war between us.

Sharks on King Street trawl past indifferent in their steel bodies. In Darlinghurst they tap for ambulances. Now if I were a Summer Hillian I’d be able to wax on about the local content and the post-mayoral revisioning thereof in the Rae oeuvre. In fact I do myself have two Summer Hill connections; one is with the Table Tennis Centre in the early seventies (ah, nobody remembers), the other is with the now IGA supermarket just behind here, the shelves of which I was helping to stack I think in 1979 or 1980, before it first opened, and where I learned a lot from first hand accounts of sexual abuse of students in Hunter Valley schools by Catholic clergy, but that as they say is another story… complete non sequitur in fact, yet part of the temporal fabric we’re tearing through here… One is struck coming here at how much – how unusually much – of this suburb is intact – I mean has not been wrecked by developers and much of this is down to Rae! I mean Mayor Jones. It looks better than it did in 1979 because it’s all been painted and some tiles have been replaced and now there are trees.

Rae Desmond Jones reading from It Comes from All Directions – New and Selected Poems

In Rae’s work there’s frequently the embarrassment of the gritty corporeal and from all directions. You were my first between two fences off a lane in Darlinghurst. From Rae one gets that awkward feeling and that sweet tease built into the hip structure is still effective at 71 and 72 (and beyond?) naked in the dancing synapses of the Rae brain. You (the reader) find yourself preparing to cringe and then you think ‘fuck it, this is real’ because there was a time when I could have been you and I am truly but I’m going there.

I readily admit I haven’t read all of the new poems and that’s because I wanted the pleasure of reading a new poem when I finally got hold of a hard copy of the book in my hands – as in, from this time on. Still, I have read enough to say that in Rae’s book singing to the arid stars turns out to be something we might ourselves not be able to do. After all, we homo sapiens are saps and this lonely night we got it coming. And again, the multiplying universes are happier now because they are recognized as they give birth to subtle gods.

And so it is with pleasure I introduce to you – Mayor Jones, R.D.J., birthday boy, survivor of the siege of Bundanon, sometime acknowledged legislator, now lost somewhere between Parnassus and Helicon, with ever a backward Eurydical glance. When he speaks – a waterfall in sunlight, nothin’ but fire rockin’ in meat. The grim bloke looking anxiously for the tuba – Rae!

- Kit Kelen

———————————————————————————————–

Christopher (Kit) Kelen is a poet, scholar and visual artist, who shuttles between his home at Markwell via Bulahdelah and a position as Professor of English at the University of Macau in south China. Over the last five years Kit has been bringing Chinese poets and translators to Australia to translate Australian poets. So far five large scale anthologies have been published as a result. Over the last twenty years a dozen books of Kit’s poetry have been published in English and volumes of his poetry have also been published in Chinese, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish and Filipino. His next volume of poems Scavenger’s Season will be published by Puncher and Wattman in Australia in 2014.

It Comes from All Directions – New and Selected Poems can be obtained by contacting Grand Poets at http://grandparadepoets.com/contact-us/

Phil Hall reading from The Small Nouns Crying Faith

The first word in this new collection by Phil Hall is "raw" and the last word is "blurtip." Between these, many nouns cry faith within a hook-less framework that sings in chorus while undermining such standard forms & tropes as "the memoir," "genealogy" and "the shepherd's calendar." With a rural pen, these poems talk frogs, carrots, local noises, partial words, remnants, dirt roads, deep breath & hope.

http://www.bookthug.ca/author-reading-the-small-nouns-crying-faith.php

Ed: A brilliant book, imho.

Larf

REASONS YOU SHOULD NOT DATE WRITERS (IF YOU ARE A WRITER)

1. Writing is not mysterious to them, so they will not romanticize, mythologize, or idealize what you do.

2. You will not as easily be able to get out of things because you need to write. (And you should be able to. You should be able say “I can’t go to the movie tonight like I said I would, because I got this idea and I have to write it down, otherwise I’ll lose momentum.” It’s a legitimate excuse.Paradoxically, non-writers are much more understanding about these things than writers.)

3. Reading and/or critiquing each other’s work is terribly awkward and fraught with nuance. It may result in the laying of emotional landmines.

4. If you are more successful than they are, they will, at least on some level, be jealous. 

5. If they are more successful than you, you will, at least on some level, be jealous.

6. One person using the relationship as material is problematic enough. Both people using it is like CatDog trying to eat itself.

7. You will be poor.

If not other writers, though, then who? Readers, of course.

from http://htmlgiant.com/random/reasons-you-should-not-date-writers-if-you-are-a-writer/

The Melbourne launch of NOTES FOR THE TRANSLATORS

The Melbourne launch of NOTES FOR THE TRANSLATORS is at 

The Boyd - Assembly Hall -- 207 - 227 City Rd, Southbank, 3006.

on Saturday 28th September - 3.30 for 4.00pm

Poets reading include:

Alex Skovron

Chris Wallace-crabbe

Jennifer Compton

Grant Caldwell

Michael Farrell

Patricia Sykes

Phillip Salom

Please get in touch with Patricia Sykes 

if you would like to be included on

the readers' list: psykes@alphalink.com.au

from Wagga Wagga Library -

'The WRITE CLUB is bare-knuckled literature.' Chicago

Poetry off the Shelf

The WRITE CLUB: Poetry Versus…

Wednesday, September 25, 7 pm

Poetry Foundation

Free admission

The WRITE CLUB is bare-knuckled literature.

Two writers argue two opposing ideas, and each has seven minutes, no more, to throw their best punches.

Writers compete for cash, which goes to a charity of their choosing, and the audience picks the winners.

Hosted by Ian Belknap, and featuring a rotating lineup of Chicago’s most audacious and fearsome writers and performers, all of the bouts in this Write Club will involve poetry in some way—page contesting stage, perhaps, or free against form, or maybe prose vs. verse.

Brace yourselves and help pick the winners.

Ed: Thanks to Max Richards for this item.

PEN Atlas: new dispatch from Adam Thirwell

Posted August 15th, 2013 by Emma Cleave & filed under Translation.

Translation and mutation: Adam Thirlwell takes us through the utopian goals and surprising results of Multiples, an experiment in translation. Charting dozens of countries, languages and authors, this anthology is playful yet subversive, questioning the purpose of translation, the idea of style and the future of the novel.

Ed: Sounds very interesting for all of us!

Note book pages

when we are coming into Melbourne from Seymour
cows raise their heads in wonder
lambs jump on the back of fashinistas

tracks take the weather
in their stride

now landscapes green at
this wet end of a long winter

in the carriage women
talk of babies as their babies cry
and a litter of nine pups
five died - "Why'd they die?"
"Dunno. Maybe she rolled
over on them. It was
her first litter."

my mother always said, "You're either
Catholic or careless - and I
was both!" I tell this to the girl
next to me - as strangers
we're discussing our families
and why we live in small country towns.

it is difficult to picture
Melbourne being born
its lean-tos and humpies
its wattle and daub
rising up on the muddy earth
like single cell amoebas
from the Yarra River
the first colonial women
in their London dresses and bonnets
baby grands full of seagulls
wilde winds playing aeolian tunes
in the dunes ...

'Next stop, Broadmeadows'

~
{return journey}

back on the Vline
on to Shepparton
four pensioners sit
across the aisle from me
and share their political wisdom -
straight off the telly
and the popular press

"I been in Queensland recently and I talked to people, hundreds, I talked to hundreds of people - and none of them, absolutely none, not one, were for Labor. And, and they weren't your Yuppies, nothing like that, just everyday people - none of them for Labor! It's gunna be a landslide! a landslide! Believe me, I tell ya ..."

after half an hour of this
i look out my window
where kids scamper
after a nanny goat in
a green meadow.
such joy! such delight!

~

home again

the dog runs circles

Out of Office

I'm away for two days, so talk amongst yourselves, won't you :-) I may take photos but don't hold yr breath.

from The Wilderness Society: Court rules James Price Point approval unlawful.

Dear Andrew, I have some exciting news to share with you. In December last year, the Wilderness Society with Walmadan (James Price Point) Traditional Owner, Richard Hunter, took the Western Australian Environmental Protection Agency to the Supreme Court over their approval process of the proposed gas plant at James Price Point. Today, we received confirmation that our case was successful! The development at James Price Point is now dead and buried. Firstly, I need to let you know that we could not have achieved this without your support. We received countless generous donations that funded this ambitious case, and today we stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of James Price Point, Broome, the Kimberley and Australia who opposed this destructive project – vindicated and elated. The court found that the Western Australian Environment Minister and the Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority had acted unlawfully in the assessment and approval process. As a result, a precedent for future approval processes in Australia has been well and truly set. A strong and clear message has been sent to any future federal government that plans to hand final environmental approval powers to the states. Tony Abbott has made his party’s position clear that they intend to do this if elected. As seen today, all this will achieve is years of prolonged and tangled up legal action while eroding business confidence and creating a nightmare for investment in our country. Without federal powers to override the irresponsible decisions of the states, the Great Barrier Reef, the Franklin River, the Daintree Rainforest and Fraser Island would all have been destroyed by now. To the Walmadan people, James Price Point has been home and an irreplaceable cultural resource for thousands of years. Today, they have shown that they will not be bullied into a corner by a money-hungry state government. And of course, the incredible wildlife that defines the Kimberley that would have suffered at the hands of this outrageous development can now continue to exist in peace: Humpback whales that make the yearly pilgrimage to the waters off James Price Point will not be disturbed by dredging and supertanker ships barging through the middle of their sanctuary Endangered bilbies won’t become truck roadkill or have their habitat cleared by bulldozers This is a victory for all of us who stood up for James Price Point and its people and wildlife. This is a victory for the people of Broome and the Traditional Custodians who bravely opposed the Western Australian Government and some of the world’s biggest resource companies and won. But most of all, this is a victory for nature. Thank you. For Wilderness, Lyndon Schneiders National Campaign Director

We are very sad to report that the poet John Hollander died Saturday in Brandford, Conn. He was 83.

Knopf had a long and rewarding association with John, and his distinguished volumes are a proud part of our poetry program. His final work, published in 2008, was A DRAFT OF LIGHT, from which the poem below is taken.

JOHN HOLLANDER

October 28, 1929 - August 17, 2013

________________________________

Some Playthings

A trembling brown bird

standing in the high grass turns

out to be a blown

oakleaf after all.

Was the leaf playing bird, or

was it "just" the wind

playing with the leaf?

Was my very noticing

itself at play with

an irregular

frail patch of brown in the cold

April afternoon?

These questions that hang

motionless in the now-stilled

air: what of their

frailty, in the light

of even the most fragile

of problematic

substances like all

these momentary playthings

of recognition?

Questions that are asked

of questions: no less weighty

and lingeringly

dark than the riddles

posed by any apparent

bird or leaf or breath

of wind, instruments

probing what we feel we know

for some kind of truth.

Excerpt from A DRAFT OF LIGHT. Copyright © 2008 by John Hollander. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Six Aussie poets feature

The Editor's Circle for Summer 2013 at US online magazine poetrymagazine.com features Australian poets David Barnes, Jason Constantine Ford, Jackson, Mardi May, Mal McKimmie and Rob Walker.

The Living Beauty - Yeats poem

The Living Beauty

by W. B. Yeats

 

 

I'll say and maybe dream I have drawn content--
Seeing that time has frozen up the blood,
The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent--
From beauty that is cast out of a mould
In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,
Appears, but when we have gone is gone again,
Being more indifferent to our solitude
Than 'twere an apparition. O heart, we are old,
The living beauty is for younger men,
We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears. 

PS: The reason I put two different banners up there is because they thoughtfully put seasonal banners, but I'd like to cover both hemispheres when we can.

Maybe the Ed Minister ought to have a peek at what they do in Finland