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Seamus Heaney: Poetry, Place, and Legacy with Jennifer Carbery
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Jennifer works with historical research around Ireland's complex history. She studied Anthropology and History as a mature student and upon completion she worked in Archaeology; digging the land for treasure. She has her own business providing research and content for historic sites, events, and radio. She teaches, assesses, and trains students, guides, and learners in history. She has written several apps for tours within Ireland.
This conversation is suitable for all ages.
90 minutes, including a 30 minute Q&A.
Jennifer Carbery presents us with a well-crafted lecture; almost cinematic, filled with events and photos, not unlike a documentary film. It is a lecture about a poet who is also a national hero, delivered in a gentle, informative manner -- but there is nothing casual about it. I sense the steely determination of a superb scholar bent on delivering the facts -- a scholar with a huge respect for her subject, but refuses to cut him any slack.
The title of this lecture is carefully chosen, I suspect: poetry, place and legacy -- and that is exactly what we get, but there is geology, geography, language, heritage, and family wrapped in as well. Carbery does not turn away from the sinister side. A silent subtitle might be circumstance: a murdered cousin, protests in Norther Ireland, dead bodies buried in the bog. Nor circumstance of best kind: opportunity and good luck, marriage to a supportive wife. The history, aka life's events, portion is sort of a bonus and this is where Carbery, historian that she is, supplies dates, and calls the moment by name. This is one of the best lectures I've attended. It has been a pleasure to reread my notes. I cannot wait to revisit the experience by viewing the recording.
Jennifer really gave the full context of Seamus Heaney: his personal history, the social surroundings, and his achievements. She included many of his poems and also integrated some beautiful videos of his readings and readings by others. We were all touched, some moved to tears.
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Dr. Carbery offered a very moving reflection on the life and poetry of Seamus Heaney. She read many of his poems and offered context behind the significance of the poems and what was happening with Heaney and Northern Ireland at the time. Wonderfully knowledgable and very touching seminar. Thank you!
I must admit I wasn't sure I was going to go with it, at the beginning. Then I decided to get back and try again, and I am so glad I did. Maybe it was the pace, or the lack of a visual of the poem words, but in the end, it was a delightful, insightful, and informative and personal presentation of a poet whose poems I have enjoyed for years. I felt I was meeting him all over again. Can't think of anything more delightful. Thank you, Jenny!
I am the woman, who, when watching your Dublin presentation mentioned witnessing the Viking Dig back in 1981. You brought that all back then, too.