Tag Archives: Seamus Heaney

Stiob! It’s the New Unsettlement

(I’ll try to post this four part piece daily across this week.) 2 One social phenomenon which illustrates this neatly is the late Soviet satiric mode of stiob*. According to Dominic Boyer and Alexei Yurchak, who produced a study comparing stiob … Continue reading

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PsychoGeoFerry 4

(This fourth part of the 2013 Tumblr posts has a semi-conclusive air to it, as I didn’t realise what was to come – the makarship, the death – and so could imagine things were heading to some sort of conclusion. … Continue reading

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Heroes and Homilies (3)

(This third section is an attempt to bring the argument a little more up to date by using three contemporary writers as a means of categorising certain ways of working with old texts, what I call ‘diachronic translation’, i.e. within … Continue reading

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Heroes and Homilies (2)

(This second section is where the homiletic theme appears in relation to Henryson. Parts of this draw on a review of Heaney’s Henryson, reproduced elsewhere on this blog, that I did for The Scottish Review of Books. But, as I’m … Continue reading

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Heroes and Homilies (1)

(This talk was delivered in the summer of 2014 at Bede’s World as part of their lecture series, and to accompany an exhibition curated by Roger Wollen, ‘Myths, Memories and Mysteries,’ which focussed on a number of contemporary artists influenced … Continue reading

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The Nay I Know Not Seamless Garment Garment

An eminently sensible question from a former student, ‘Do you have different blogs for a reason? Maybe you should just choose one and stick to it?’ has made me go over this old niggle from a new angle. Whether we’re … Continue reading

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On (and over) The Wall

(An edited version of this talk was broadcast on Radio 3’s ‘The Essay’ as part of their Free-Thinking Festival, 2010. It was recorded at the Sage on November 7th, and, at the moment, is not available on their site, but … Continue reading

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Embodying delight (some formulae)

Alan Gillis, Hawks and Doves, The Gallery Press, 79pp; Fiona Sampson, Common Prayer, Carcanet, 74pp; Lynne Wycherley, North Flight, Shoestring Press, 70pp. There are a number of now quite stately premisses on which we still rely when we come to … Continue reading

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