The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Kaveh Akbar
Kaveh Akbar discusses his new collection, PILGRIM BELL.
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Posts Tagged: Seamus Heaney
A Poetics of Questions: The Bower by Connie Voisine
To learn is perhaps Voisine’s primary goal in writing the poems in The Bower.
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A Metaphysical Inquiry: Nick Laird’s Feel Free
The work maintains a wondering backward, as it were, tracing the varied details of lived experience.
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A Very Precarious Moment: Talking with Karen Russell
Karen Russell discusses her newest collection, ORANGE WORLD AND OTHER STORIES.
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Saudade Manifest: Biography, Myth-Making, and Haunted Houses in the Amazon
A myth is its own kind of truth.
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Discovering Septimania
I set off for Rome with my fiddle and a backpack, planning to busk as long as the tourists could stand it.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Tess Taylor
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with Tess Taylor about her new collection Work & Days, manual labor, and the lyric possibilities in small fields.
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The Rumpus Interview with Mary Karr
Mary Karr talks about her new book The Art of Memoir, the perception of memoir from a “trashy” form, the virtues of poetry, and the complexity of truth-telling.
...moreSeamus Heaney’s Last Poem
Seamus Heaney’s poem “In A Field” is allegedly the last poem ever written by Seamus Heaney before his passing in June. The Irish Poet wrote it following an invitation by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy to contribute to a memorial anthology about the World War I. Read more about his contribution and two of his poems on the […]
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The Country Outside Us
In Ireland, I fell in love easily and often. On the bus from Galway to Dublin; in a smoky, centuries-old pub; on a Donegal beach, my hair wet with rain.
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David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Death of the Natural
I mean, his [Heaney’s] verse is under my skin. His verbs are inside my veins. His metaphors are in my nervous system. His moral clarity is a light inside my own, shall we say, republic of conscience.
...moreWeekend Rumpus Roundup
Giddy-up, you hateful stallion! It’s time for another Weekend Rumpus Roundup. In the Saturday interview, Kiese Laymon takes some time with the Rumpus to discuss his latest book, Long Division, and explores in greater length the literary influences that have contributed to the development of his own Afrofuturist style. Irish poet Seamus Heaney—who unfortunately passed […]
...moreSeamus Heaney: 1939 – 2013
I was saddened to read the news on my Facebook page this morning (because that’s how we get most of our news these days, from shared stories on social media) of Seamus Heaney’s death at the age of 74. Many friends and acquaintances noted his passing by posting quotes from his poems, or by linking […]
...moreAuthors Deface Own Books for Charity
Literary organization English PEN has chosen an interesting way to raise funds: ask authors to annotate first editions of their books, and then auction them off. J. K. Rowling is the prize catch in terms of predicted auction money, but 49 other writers are participating, from Philip Pullman to Jeanette Winterson. …Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, looking […]
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And Then Lapsed Ordinary
I found myself intrigued by all of the energy surrounding what people seem to be calling a renewed energy in Heaney’s work.
...morePoetic Lives Online: Links by Brian Spears
The Irish Times reports on Seamus Heaney’s Irish Human Rights Commission lecture, in which he argues that the work of writers has been crucial in keeping alive the spirit of freedom. I’m looking forward to seeing a transcript of this speech, because I’d like to see how far he pushes the comparison. Kenneth Goldsmith links […]
...moreComing Out of the Bog
Earlier this year, a couple of archaeologists pulled a barrel of butter out of a peat bog in Ireland, about 25 miles west of Dublin. It wasn’t the first time this has happened–in fact, it’s not even unusual anymore–but it happens infrequently enough that when it does occur, there’s an air of the “wow, that’s […]
...morePoetic Lives Online: Links by Brian Spears
The New Haven Review has an interview with David Orr, including Orr’s take on the spitting match between him and Dana Goodyear a couple of years ago. Poetry is on the radio again, thanks to WSUM. You can also listen to Word Salad online if you prefer. How can a vocabulary change your life? Carol […]
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