6. The Singer's House and Other Poems

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, Rosie speaks about three of Heaney's poems which pick up key themes from his prose works: 'The Singer's House' anticipates 'Crediting Poetry' in its consideration of the poet's voice; 'Station Island' picks up the theme of the poet's role in society; and 'The Loose Box' considers the idea of finding one's feet as a poet, something which was also seen in 'Something to Write Home About'

Course

The American poet Robert Lowell described Seamus Heaney as the greatest Irish poet since W. B. Yeats, and many noted the coincidence that Heaney was born in the year that Yeats died. A Nobel prize winner and Ireland's unofficial national poet until his death in 2013, Heaney is probably most well-known for his poem 'Digging'. In this course, we look beyond 'Digging' to Heaney's other works, his prose, his poetry, and his translations.

Lecturer

After reading English at St Anne’s College, Oxford, Rosie trained as a journalist at City University, London. She worked on the business desk at The Times for two years, as a media assistant to a London MEP during the European elections in 2009, and for House of Lords Hansard. She returned to Oxford for postgraduate study in 2010 and completed her doctorate, ‘Seamus Heaney and Society, 1964 – 1994’, in 2014. She held stipendiary lectureships in English at St Hugh’s and St Anne’s Colleges in 2014-15, before joining the School of English at Trinity College, Dublin in September 2015.