Let Me See That Throng Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney Meets Crowd at Mead Chapel

Author: Chris Richards

Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney gave a down-to-earth and unpretentious reading to a warm Mead Chapel audience on Monday afternoon. Heaney, who is widely regarded as the greatest living poet writing in the English language, read from poems spanning his four-decade long career from and shared personal anecdotes, political ideas and thoughts on the nature of poetry.
Jay Parini, D.E. Axinn professor of creative writing, introduced Heaney, describing him as the individual who has "worn the mantle of poetry in the world's eye" in a way that Robert Frost did. Born in rural Country Derry as a Catholic in British-controlled Northern Ireland, Heaney's work is deeply fused with political tension and yet contains imagery rooted in the earth and the experiences of his agrarian childhood. His connection to the earth and interest in the pastoral deeply resembles Frost's use of bucolic New England.
While Heaney is interested in living in the present and the contemporary political climate, he began his address by acknowledging Robert Frost who had a profound impact not only on Heaney but on Middlebury College as well. Stating that he was honored to be at a place where Frost lived and worked, the Irish poet started his reading with Frost's poem, "Out, Out—." He followed that with a poem of his own, "Mid-Term Break," written in a style similar to that of Frost, who, according to Heaney, was "one of the first poets that made me feel safe in the realm of poetry."