SEAMUS HEANEY (1939-2013)It is only 6 months since the greatest Irish poet since Yeats and a towering figure in international literature stepped on to Oxford’s Sheldonian stage to deliver the Chancellor’s lecture. There followed just more than an hour of soft and moving readings and a conversation with his friend, the writer Kevin Crossley-Holland, where we, the audience, were invited to eavesdrop and share his thoughts and experiences, a rare privilege. Afterwards, he looked up at the never-ending queue awaiting his signature on their volume of poetry and said: 'It’ll take an hour but I must sign them all, they may have come some distance.'
Those of us who spent time with him during that day were with a man you felt you already knew, so warmly familiar yet also delightfully courteous and charming was his demeanour. To think his last line is written is a cruel blow to all of us who love literature but that he came our way once will always be a treasured memory.
And so by night and day to be transported
Through galleried earth. with them, the only relict
Of all that I belonged to, hurtled forward,
Reflecting in a window-mirror backed
By blasting weeping rock-walls
Flicker-lit.
from District and CircleGraham Benson
Deputy Chairman
The Oxford Literary Festival
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It is only 6 months since the greatest Irish poet since Yeats and a towering figure in international literature stepped on to Oxford’s Sheldonian stage to deliver the Chancellor’s lecture. There followed just more than an hour of soft and moving readings and a conversation with his friend, the writer Kevin Crossley-Holland, where we, the audience, were invited to eavesdrop and share his thoughts and experiences, a rare privilege. Afterwards, he looked up at the never-ending queue awaiting his signature on their volume of poetry and said: 'It’ll take an hour but I must sign them all, they may have come some distance.'
Those of us who spent time with him during that day were with a man you felt you already knew, so warmly familiar yet also delightfully courteous and charming was his demeanour. To think his last line is written is a cruel blow to all of us who love literature but that he came our way once will always be a treasured memory.
And so by night and day to be transported
Through galleried earth. with them, the only relict
Of all that I belonged to, hurtled forward,
Reflecting in a window-mirror backed
By blasting weeping rock-walls
Flicker-lit.
from District and Circle
Graham Benson
Deputy Chairman
The Oxford Literary Festival
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