Nobels: 1995: Seamus Heaney

I have skipped over the 1996 winner, Wisława Szymborska, on my "no lyric poetry in translation" rule and I could have claimed exemption on this one. Of course I've read some of Heaney's poems, and his translation of Beowulf which didn't excite me greatly. But instead I took the chance to read en masse this 1990 collection.


It's a generous selection from a huge body of work, and makes apparent that Heaney's work was incredibly varied both in subject matter and in form. Reading the poems in sequence isn't something I'd normally do, but at times it felt like a running commentary on the recent history of Northern Ireland was weaving in and out of the other concerns - nature, memory, language - more or less strongly as the times demanded.

Those times aren't so far away and his clear, undogmatic approach must have been hard to maintain among the clashing certainties.

As with Beowulf I don't find myself intimately drawn to the poetry, despite fully accepting the enormous skill and artistry. That's just one of those things: just something that doesn't quite click with me. Heaney and Derek Walcott are the only English language poets to have won the Nobel in recent years: are they really the best there has been? The question itself seems ridiculous.

This one, from his first collection, for its topicality.

Blackberry-Picking

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.