Slip-Sliding Away ....Seamus Heaney

I had great intentions of blogging about my time in Ireland and Andalucía...it seems like an age ago now and the memories are fading fast. It was full of anecdotal happenings that I kept thinking, 'this - I got to blog about/this - I sure want to remember...' you know the usual promises to oneself that one makes while on holiday -changes, changes, changes and then once back on the home turf, it's back to safe, old-laziness again ; )

Anyway, the literary high-light was definitely being able to slip away to the
Flatlake Literary Festival - I say slip-away as Vladi had a leg muscle problem and was literally off-his-legs for about 10 days while in Ireland. This happened the day after we had rented the car...luckily, he is an absolute angel of a patient and didn't need me to sit by his bedside day-in, day-out and actually actively encouraged me to spin, spin, spin in the rented car! So it meant that I went there on my own, without a tent or anything but with the phone number of a hairdresser who said she would let me a room...a long and intricate 'other' story for 'another' time. : )

At this stage, I must admit that I thought the performances themselves would be taking place in the rather lovely Flatlake house - I imagined some swanning around corridors and tasty tit-bits on cocktail sticks. It wasn't until I landed there and was sitting at the hairdresser's kitchen table that the rugged truth came to light when she asked me if I had brought my wellies! Yes, it was going to be pissing rain, big tents and bales of hay.

The highlight of course was Seamus Heaney. People were gathering well in time to hear him and this augered well for the pre-Heaney act - the very alive-and-kicking rock group called Mr T. and the Biscuits who were running late and in full swing to a very live-Heaney audience. The resistance and sighs from the Heaney-People were palpable but these roguish musicians managed to turn the Heaney-people into Mr T. people, if only for an instant. There was foot-tapping and no-holds-barred grins when songs about Zombies and being-beaten-off-the-stage arose from the Mr Ts - at this stage Heaney himself was in the audience and the tent was rocking.

This was my first time hearing Seamus Heaney read and I must say, I was reduced to putty in this great poet's hand. He is about my own father's age and hails from a similar rural Northern Ireland setting and I imagine this had much to do with how I found myself reacting to his reading. He read from Death of a Naturalist and also from his new manuscript which he is still working on and involves work into the history of Colm Cille. Unfortunately, I did not take notes, even though I had pen and paper...I guess I didn't want to miss a word and kept on, looking on as opposed to jotting down - I do regret that now.

I do remember his references to his schooling days and the 'lick of the pencil' idea and the importance of their being 'recognition' in an everyday sense not an award-winning sense - I think he meant our ability to recognise the moment, to to be able to savour it and later recall it. Something else he said was in reference to a quote from Shakespeare where he talks of the need to 'be absolute in death', Heaney changed this around and said he also believed in the need 'to be absolute in life.'

The theme for the whole literary festival was Northern Ireland writers - and a theme that seemed to run through the writers that I heard talk (Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Bernard Mac Laverty...)was their relationship to their parents - I found it very moving and very informing about how even years, and decades even, into fame and success for their literary achievements that the writing still goes back to the idea of connections, of trying to speak the sometimes-impossible to those who may no longer be there, physically, but who always remain emotionally and spiritually.