Seamus is Famous

We arrived back in Ireland a day late due to work commitments. I have referred to the satanic mill  in jest but I wasn't laughing on Saturday. 16 hours in Canterbury chewing legal sawdust is not a laughing matter.

Enough. I am home. The air is clear and there is an autumn chill. We are lying low and being treated like children by my mother.

I was introduced to the term inner emigre by Seamus Heaney.  In an interview he said  "from the beginning to the end of the Irish tradition, there is this example of exiling yourself from the familiar in order to compose your soul — which is a parallel activity, I suppose, to composing poetry".

I glimpsed the funeral of Mr Heaney on the TV. I was aware of his passing through the Guardian  online who asked Sir Bono of Vox to ruminate . It would  have been more appropriate  if they asked regular folk but instead they asked the messianic one .

At school I had difficulty with poetry . I couldn't connect with Wordsworth , Larkin's sourness or Hopkin's prosody. That changed when I read Mr. Heaney . His poems were concrete, spare and the rural imagery familiar. When he described his pen as a gun he took a hold and his struggle to find images  for  adversity were an inspiration. His work led to others like Czelaw Milosz and back again to Hopkins . As a writer he engaged with his time and made beauty out of madness.

A great poet and, from all accounts, a great humble man.