Seamus Heaney was an Irish poet who wrote extensively about The Troubles in Northern Ireland. He received numerous awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. His work had a profound influence on my development as a poet.
Geosi Gyasi is an avid reader and blogger based in Ghana who has interviewed a wide range of authors over several years. He discovered my work through a poem recently published in Rattle, and asked some interesting questions in our interview–about how formal study has influenced my poems, about how I see technology shaping poetry, …
As the year comes to a close, I find myself in a reflective mood. Having compiled a list of the more than 350 poets I have mentioned on my website since I began writing about poetry in 2003, I was curious to discover which poets I have mentioned most often in the last ten years. …
The sound of a giant falling is so tremendous that whatever we say afterward must be done in a whisper. It occurs to me that quietly retracing the ways in which this wonderful poet influenced my personal relationship to poetry could serve not only as the telling of a somewhat universal tale, but also as a personal tribute.
The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry, edited by Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion, has been my field guide to better-known British poets, and a useful overview for me. Having mostly studied British poets dating from before the 18th century, and American poets since that time, I have been reading this book as eagerly as …
“In art, you’re free.” –Marvin Bell One of the delights of my web presence is that I sometimes get emails from writers and readers fairly new to poetry. Recently, a young marketing executive in Singapore wrote to me. In our most recent exchange, he rightly points out that, especially in the US, there seem to …
Reading the admonitions against earnestness from the old ghost that appears in Heaney’s “Station Island” part XII brings to mind Patrick Kavanagh. Whether or not Kavanagh was the conscious model for this character in Heaney’s poem, the by turns severe and antic nature of this individual has Kavanagh written all over it. In his poem, …
Heaney Astray: the Importance of Not Being So Earnest Read More »
