Seamus Heaney by Graham Fawcett Thursday 11 October 2018 8 pm

‘Do go; these are very special occasions.’ Bridport Review

Seamus Heaney: life and poems

Talk with Readings by Graham Fawcett

Thursday 11 October 2018, 8 pm

Tickets: £10 or £25 with dinner from 6.30 pm before the talk

Please phone 01308 459511 to book now! 

Next Graham Fawcett Talk: WB Yeats on Thursday 29 November

Graham Fawcett reflects on the exhilarating range of Heaney’s achievement over nearly fifty years, from his momentous poetic début in 1966 with Death of A Naturalist, poems about his early life in rural Northern Ireland in which he sings with passion, craft and clarity about the world within a world around him. 

Nobel Prize laureate in 1995, and outstanding translator of Beowulf and other poems and plays from the ancient and medieval worlds, Heaney wrote more than twenty books of poetry and criticism. Hailed since his death and before it as the finest Irish poet since Yeats, Heaney’s stirring legacy is that of a man whose abiding concern was to sing simply and wonderfully of Ireland, her language and history, and the crafts and customs of a rural heritage past and present, and who did not flinch from making the suffering of modern Ireland his poet’s business.

After Heaney’s death in 2013, the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, said that for his “brothers and sisters in poetry … he came to be the poet we all measured ourselves against and he demonstrated the true vocational nature of his art for every moment of his life. He is irreplaceable.” 

Seamus Heaney

Many poets spoke too of his enduring generosity towards others and the unassuming manner and lightness of touch with which he welcomed all who came across him.

‘The most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival in it of poetry itself – as a vocation and an elevation almost.’ Seamus Heaney, in ‘The Art of Poetry No. 75′, interviewed by Henri Cole in The Paris Review, Autumn 1997, No. 144

‘I was royally entertained’ Annie Freud

GRAHAM FAWCETT has lectured or led workshops at literary festivals throughout Britain on reading and writing poetry. A highly entertaining lecturer, writer and educator, he has been a tutor for The Poetry School since 1997, devising and teaching new courses on poetry past and present from around the world. Previous to that he wrote and presented radio programmes about literature and music on BBC Radio 3 for many years.

Graham Fawcett’s talks explore leading poets, their lives, the political and cultural environment in which they wrote and, most of all, their work. The programme is two 45 minute halves with an interval. To complete the evening, why not enjoy a pre-lecture  dinner served by the celebrated and award-winning Café Sladers. The £15 buys a full main course from a choice of seafood, free-range meat or vegetarian dishes. A wonderful selection of wines, desserts and cheese are available à la carte.

Please phone 01308 459511 to book your tickets now.

A wonderful review of Graham Fawcett’s Coleridge Talk: John Pownall

A review of Graham Fawcett’s fascinating lecture on John Donne can be found here.

“We [the audience] were more than happy to stay the course, stunned and astonished in equal measure. Stunned by the breadth and depth of Fawcett’s criticism, astonished at our luck to be living miles from a university yet participating in what, to all intents and purposes, was a post-graduate lecture, presented with immaculate complexity by a master of ceremonies par-excellence.”

Elaine Beckett, Bridport Review