Northern Irish poet Seamus Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. Since then, his lines have been quoted by world leaders, his new translation of “Beowulf” has become a best-seller, and he has praised rapper Eminem for encouraging interest in poetry among young people. But in his latest collection, District & Circle, Heaney returns to some of the darkest images of his work in the 1970’s when the violence in Northern Ireland was still his main preoccupation.
Perro de Jong talked to the poet at the 2006 Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam. About the perils of discarding history too soon…and the need to go back to the “first life” of memory and the place when the world makes you feel “simply lost”.
Producer: Perro de Jong
Broadcast: December 27, 2006