Self-Reflexivity and Translation in Heaney's Late Poetry

What is it about?

The essay explores how from the beginning to the end of his career Heaney alludes directly to acts of inscription, and the ambivalent feelings writing continued to arouse in him. Whereas in 'Digging' (1966), for example, the pen functions as a means of asserting his individuality and identity, in 'The Conway Stewart' (2010), it acts as an instrument to express the deep, unspoken love connecting parents and son. Subsequently, it examines translation's major role in his creative processes.

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Why is it important?

This is one of the first published essays on Human Chain, offering detailed readings of individual poems and the contexts from which they arise. It offers a foretaste of a longer analysis of Heaney's final collection, which will appear in my next monograph, Seamus Heaney: Legacies, Afterlives, which will appear in 2015, and offer an account of his entire oeuvre, based largely on archive work carried out in the UK, US and Ireland.