Thammasat University students are cordially invited to participate in a free online public lecture about Planting poems: Seamus Heaney’s eco-poetry.

The event will be held on Saturday, 13 November starting at 4:30pm Bangkok time.

It is organized by The John Rylands Research Institute and Library in Manchester, England, the United Kingdom, in partnership with the British Academy.

The Thammasat University Library collection includes many books by and about the Irish poet Seamus Heaney.

Seamus Heaney was a professor at Harvard University in Cambridge Massachusetts, the United States of America, and lectured at the University of Oxford. Long before he was awarded  the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past, he was so celebrated for the quality of his writing that he was known informally in the poetry community as Famous Seamus, to tell him apart from other Irish poets named Seamus who had lesser poetry careers.

The speakers at the 13 November event will be Dr. Yvonne Reddick of University of Central Lancashire and Professor John McAuliffe, Professor of Poetry, University of Manchester.

As the event website states,

In partnership with the British Academy, in this event discover Seamus Heaney’s climate change poetry and activism, hear the works of other contemporary poets and reflect on how you experience our changing environment before writing your own poem on wildflower seed paper inspired by what you have heard.

Irish poet Seamus Heaney was known for his focus on the natural world, but in later life he more actively explored climate change, peatland conservation and environmental challenges. Discover climate change poetry written by Heaney and other contemporary poets, learn about Heaney’s unassuming conservation activism, and reflect on how you experience our changing environment.

Students may register for the event at this link.

As its website notes,

The British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. We mobilise these disciplines to understand the world and shape a brighter future.

From artificial intelligence to climate change, from building prosperity to improving well-being – today’s complex challenges can only be resolved by deepening our insight into people, cultures and societies.

We invest in researchers and projects across the UK and overseas, engage the public with fresh thinking and debates, and bring together scholars, government, business and civil society to influence policy for the benefit of everyone.

Much of Seamus Heaney’s poetry was about childhood experience with nature on the farm where he grew up.

As a little boy, he would watch his father dig in a potato field. Even at an early age, he enjoyed being with nature.

A number of research studies have examined the themes of nature and ecopoetics in the work of Seamus Heaney. They have appeared in such publications as Environmental Humanities, a peer-reviewed, international, open-access journal. The journal publishes outstanding interdisciplinary scholarship that draws humanities disciplines into conversation with each other, and with the natural and social sciences, around significant environmental issues.

Here are some examples of nature-themed poetry by Seamus Heaney, available online:

===

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.

===

Digging

 

Between my finger and my thumb  

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

 

Under my window, a clean rasping sound  

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:  

My father, digging. I look down

 

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds  

Bends low, comes up twenty years away  

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills  

Where he was digging.

 

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft  

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

 

By God, the old man could handle a spade.  

Just like his old man.

 

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

 

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

 

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

===

Death of a Naturalist

 

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart

Of the townland; green and heavy headed

Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.

Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.

Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles

Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.

There were dragonflies, spotted butterflies,

But best of all was the warm thick slobber

Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water

In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring

I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied

Specks to range on window sills at home,

On shelves at school, and wait and watch until

The fattening dots burst, into nimble

Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how

The daddy frog was called a bullfrog

And how he croaked and how the mammy frog

Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was

Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too

For they were yellow in the sun and brown

In rain.

 

    Then one hot day when fields were rank

With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs

Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges

To a coarse croaking that I had not heard

Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.

Right down the dam gross bellied frogs were cocked

On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:

The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat

Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.

I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings

Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew

That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)