'Befitting Emblems of Adversity'
Lyric and Crisis in Northern Irish Poetry 1966 – 2006

A Lannan Literary Symposium & Festival
Georgetown University
April 17 – 18, 2007

The publication forty years ago of Seamus Heaney's Death of a Naturalist sounded the first notes of a new generation of Irish poets. Shortly thereafter, these notes were challenged in the public sphere by the harsher sounds of sectarian faction. How poetry managed not only to preserve its own domain and dignity in the midst of such turmoil but did so in a manner which gained the sympathetic attention of a worldwide audience is the topic of the 2007 Lannan Literary Symposium.

Poetry readings, talks, and roundtable discussions will take place over two days at Georgetown University and at the National Geographic Society in downtown Washington, DC.

Paul Muldoon	Ciarán Carson	Michael Longley	Medbh McGuckian
Leontia Flynn	Gerald Dawe	Edna Longley	Sinéad Morrissey
Nick Laird	Greg Delanty	Frank Ormsby	Bernard O’Donoghue
Nicholas Allen	Patrick Crotty	Cóilín Owens	Jefferson Holdridge
George O’Brien			Christina Mahony

Click for event schedule | ABOUT THE WRITERS

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SPONSORS
Lannan Foundation
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland | Queen’s University | National Geographic Society |
The Department of Culture, Arts, and Leisure (Northern Ireland)

Office of the College Dean | Department of English

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Books provided by Rod Smith
Bridge Street Books
2814 Pennsylvania Ave NW (at M St NW)
(202) 965-5200
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The Georgetown University Lannan Literary Programs sponsors annual readings, talks, seminars, and symposia from the world of contemporary writing. George O’Brien, Director of the 2007 symposium, obrieng1@georgetown.edu. Mark McMorris, Director, Lannan Literary Programs, mcmorrim@georgetown.edu.

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Schedule

TUESDAY, APRIL 17

11:00AM– 12:15PM
SYMPOSIUM I: Reception Politics (Copley)

The history and tendencies of the ways in which Northern Irish poetry has been received within the Anglophone critical establishments. Frank Ormsby, Bernard O’Donoghue, Cóilín Owens, & Jefferson Holdridge (moderator).

2:00 – 3:30PM
SYMPOSIUM II: Theories of Witness, Subjects of Trauma: Writing Violence (Copley)

The cultural authority and social relevance of poetry as a source of testimony and medium of record. Gerald Dawe, Greg Delanty, Christina Hunt Mahony, & Nicholas Allen (moderator).

4:00 – 5:00PM
POETRY READING (Copley)

Names and places: Frank Ormsby and Greg Delanty read from their work.

7:00 – 8:00PM
KEYNOTE LECTURE (Copley)

“Yeats, MacNeice and the ‘Troubles’ Lyric.” Edna Longley addresses tradition and form in the genesis of Northern Irish poetry.

8:30 – 9:30PM
POETRY READING (Copley)

At home in the world: a poetry reading by Gerald Dawe and Bernard O’Donoghue.

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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18

11:00 – 11:30AM
VIDEO DIALOGUE (ICC)

“Sing yourself to where the singing comes from”: Seamus Heaney in conversation with Dennis O’Driscoll. Video recording made at Dublin, Ireland, March 1, 2007.

11:30AM – 1:00PM
SYMPOSIUM III: Lyric and Crisis (ICC)

The availability of the lyric mode to the historical moment, and the pressure on the form exerted by that moment. Is there a center that holds? How might it be identified and spoken of? Ciarán Carson, Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon, Medbh McGuckian, & Patrick Crotty (moderator).

2:45 – 4:00PM
POETRY READING (Copley)

Lyric renewed: new poetry from Northern Ireland. Sinéad Morrisey, Leontia Flynn, & Nick Laird.

7:30 – 9:00PM
POETRY READING (National Geographic Society)

“To exalt a lonely mind”: Ciaran Carson, Michael Longley, Medbh McGuckian & Paul Muldoon read from their poems.

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Copley Formal Lounge (Copley) and the InterCultural Center Auditorium (ICC) are located at 37th & O Streets, at Georgetown University. All events at Georgetown are free and open to the public. The National Geographic Society Auditorium is located at  1145 17th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036. Tickets for the reading on April 18 may be purchased online at NGLIVE.org or by calling the National Geographic ticket office at 202 857-7700.

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BIOS

Ciarán Carson was born in Belfast in 1948 and educated at Queen’s University there. He worked for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland from 1975 to 1998, with responsibility for Traditional Music and Literature. A musician himself, he has published two books on Irish traditional music, The Pocket Guide to Traditional Music (1986) and Last Night’s Fun (1997). In 2003 he was appointed Professor of Poetry and Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University. His collections of poetry include The Irish for No (1987); Belfast Confetti (1989), which received the Irish Times Literature Prize; First Language (1993), which was awarded the T.S. Eliot prize; and The Twelfth of Never (1998). His most recent volume of poetry is Breaking News (2003). Among his prose works are The Star Factory (1997), Fishing for Amber (2000) and Shamrock Tea (2001). His translation of Dante’s Inferno appeared in 2002 and, from the Irish of Brian Merrimam, Cúirt an Mheán Oíche (The Midnight Court) in 2005. A translation of the Old Irish epic Táin Bó Cuailgne is forthcoming. He is a member of Aosdána.

Gerald Dawe was born in Belfast in 1952 and educated at the University of Ulster and at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He six collections of poetry include Sheltering Places (1978), Sunday School (1991), The Morning Train (1999) and Lake Geneva (2003). A recipient of a number of awards, including The Macauley Fellowship in Literature (1984) and the Ledig-Rowohlt International Writers’ Fellowship (1999), he was elected Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, where he is Director of the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, Director of the Graduate Writing Programme, and Lecturer in English. He was editor of the periodical Krino from 1986 to 1996, and held the Burns Chair at Boston College in 2005. A selection of his criticism is forthcoming from Creighton University Press, and Earth Voices Whispering, an anthology of Irish war poetry, is forthcoming from Blackstaff.

Greg Delanty was born in Cork in 1958 and educated at the National University of Ireland, Cork. He became a U.S. citizen in 1994 and was a Green Party candidate in the Vermont state elections in 2004. Publications include American Wake (1985), The Hellbox (1998), The Blind Stitch (2001) and The Ship of Birth (2003). His Collected Poems 1986-2006 was published in 2007. His anthology, Jumping Off Shadows: Selected Contemporary Irish Poetry, edited with Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, came out in 1995, and with Robert Welsh he has edited The Selected Poems of Patrick Galvin (1995). Among the awards he has received are the Patrick Kavanagh Award (1983), the Allen Dowling Poetry Fellowship (1986), and the Austin Clarke Award (1996). His translations of Aristophanes’ The Suits and Euripides’ Orestes both appeared in 1999. He is Artist in Residence at St. Michael’s College, Vermont.

Leontia Flynn was born in 1974 in County Down, Northern Ireland and educated at Queen’s University, Belfast. In 2001 she received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors, and in 2004 These Days won the Forward Prize for best first collection. On the basis of this work she was named one of twenty “Next Generation” poets by the Poetry Book Society. She is currently a research fellow at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University, where she is preparing her doctoral thesis on the poetry of Medbh McGuckian for publication.

Seamus Heaney was born at Mossbawn, County Derry, Northern Ireland in 1939 and educated at Queen’s University Belfast. His first book, Death of a Naturalist (1966), received the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Cholmondeley Award and the Somerset Maugham Award. Subsequent award-winning volumes include North (1975), Station Island (1984), Seeing Things (1991) and The Spirit Level (1996); Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996 appeared in 1998. His most recent collection, District and Circle (2006) received the T.S. Eliot Award. His prose collections include Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978 (1980), The Government of the Tongue (1988) and The Redress of Poetry (1995). He has written two plays, The Cure at Troy (1990, a version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes) and The Burial at Thebes (2004, a version of Sophocles’ Antigone). Among his translations are Sweeney Astray (1983; from the twelfth-century Irish, Buile Suibhne) and Beowulf (2000), which received the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. He has held teaching positions in Ireland and the United States, including the Boylston Chair of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. He holds the rank of Saoi in Aosdána. Seamus Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995.

Nick Laird was born in Cookstown, Country Tyrone, Northern Ireland, in 1975 and is a graduate of Cambridge University, where he won the Quiller-Couch Award for creative writing. He also studied at the College of Law, London and was a visiting Fellow at Harvard University in 2003. His first book of a poetry, To a Fault (2005), received a number of awards, including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. His first novel, Utterly Monkey (2005), received the Society of Authors’ Betty Trask Award for best first novel. His essays and reviews have appeared in such publications as the London Review of Books, the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement. Two new books, On Purpose, a collection of poetry, and Glover’s Mistake, a novel, are forthcoming.

Edna Longley was born in Dublin in 1940 and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. She taught for many years in the School of English at Queen’s University, Belfast, where she is now Professor Emerita. A leading critic of modern poetry, she has written on W.B. Yeats, Louis MacNeice, Edward Thomas and the Great War poets. Her criticism of Northern Irish poetry is contained in Poetry in the Wars (1986), The Living Stream (1994) and Poetry and Posterity (2000). Her other publications include Louis MacNeice: A Study (1989), and she has edited The Bloodaxe Book of Twentieth-Century Poetry from Britain and Ireland (2000). Professor Longley is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and a Fellow of the British Academy, and is also a member of the Associated Staff of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University.

Michael Longley was born in Belfast in 1939 and educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and at Trinity College, Dublin. From 1970 to 1991 he worked for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland as Combined Arts Director. His collections of poetry include No Continuing City: Poems 1963-1968 (1969), Man Lying on a Wall (1976), Gorse Fires (1991), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award, The Weather in Japan (2000), which was awarded the Hawthornden Prize, the T.S. Eliot Award and the Irish Times Poetry Award, and Snow Water (2004). He was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2001. His Collected Poems was published in 2006. He has edited Causeway: The Arts in Ulster (1971), Louis MacNeice: Selected Poems (1988), W.R. Rodgers: Selected Poems (1993) and Twentieth-Century Irish Poems (2002). His prose includes Tuppeny Stung: Autobiographical Chapters (1994). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of Aosdána.

Medbh McGuckian was born in Belfast in 1950 and educated at Queen’s University, Belfast. She received an Eric Gregory Award in 1980 and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature as well as the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award for The Flower Master (1982). Her other collections of poetry include On Ballycastle Beach (1984), which was awarded the Cheltenham Poetry Prize, Captain Lavender (1994) and Shelmalier (1998). Her Selected Poems 1978-1994 was published in 1997. Her most recent collection is The Currach Requires No Harbours (2006). She has edited the anthology The Big Striped Golfing Umbrella: Poems by Young People from Northern Ireland (1985), and has translated (with Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin) a selection of poems from the Irish of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill entitled The Water Horse (1999). Her prose includes Horsepower Pass By! (1999), a study of the car in the poetry of Seamus Heaney.

Sinéad Morrissey was born in Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, in 1972 and grew up in Belfast. She was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Her collections of poetry are There Was a Fire in Vancouver (1996), Between Here and There (2002) and The State of the Prisons (2005). Her awards include the Patrick Kavanagh Award (1990), the Eric Gregory Award (1996), the Rupert and Eithne Strong Trust Award (2002) and the Michael Hartnett Award for Poetry (2005). In 2002 she was the Poetry International Writer in Residence at the Royal Festival Hall, London, and took part in the Writers’ Train Project in China (2003). She has taught widely in Germany, Japan and New Zealand. She is currently a member of the faculty of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen’s University, Belfast.

Paul Muldoon was born in County Armagh in 1951 and educated at Queen’s University, Belfast. He worked for B.B.C. Radio, Northern Ireland, from 1973 to 1986. He is Howard G.B. Clark ‘21 Professor of the Humanities and Creative Writing at Princeton University and an Honorary Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. Among his collections of poetry are New Weather (1973), Why Brownlee Left (1980), Meeting the British (1987), Madoc: A Mystery (1990), which received the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, The Annals of Chile (1994), which received the T.S. Eliot Award, Moy Sand and Gravel, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Griffin Prize for Excellence in Poetry. His most recent collection is Horse Latitudes (2006). He has also received the Shakespeare Prize (2004) and the Aspen Prize for Poetry (2005). Other works include libretti Shining Brow (1992), Bandanna (1998), Vera of Las Vegas (2001) and The Antient Concert (2005); General Admission (2006), a collection of song lyrics; the anthologies The Faber Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry (1986) and The Faber Book of Beasts (1997); and translations of Aristophanes’ The Birds (1999) and of Irish poems of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, The Astrakhan Cloak (1992). His criticism has been collected in two volumes, To Ireland, I (2000) and The End of the Poem (2006). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Bernard O’Donoghue was born in Cullen, County Cork, in 1945 and later moved to Manchester, England. He was educated at Oxford University, where he is a Fellow of Wadham College. His collections of poetry include Gunpowder (1995), which received the Whitbread Poetry Prize, Here Nor There (1999) and Outliving (2003). Other works include an edition of the i (1982), an anthology, The Courtly Love Tradition (1984) and a work of criticism, Seamus Heaney and the Language of Poetry (1994). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His most recent book is a translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2006). Selected Poems is forthcoming.

Dennis O’Driscoll was born in Thurles, County Tipperary, in 1954. He studied law at the National University of Ireland, Dublin. He has worked in the Irish Civil Service since the age of sixteen. Among his collections of poetry are Kist (1982), Hidden Extras (1987), Long Short Story (1993) and Exemplary Damages (2002); New and Selected Poems was published in 2004 and received a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Other awards include a Lannan Literary Award (1999), the American Academy of Arts and Letters E.M. Forster Award (2005) and the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry (2006). His selected criticism, Troubled Thoughts, Majestic Dreams, was published in 2001. He has also compiled and edited The Bloodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations (2006). He is a member of Aosdána.

Frank Ormsby was born in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, in 1947 and educated at Queen’s University, Belfast. Since 1975 he has been Head of English at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. His collections of poetry are A Store of Candles (1977), A Northern Spring (1986) and The Ghost Train (1995). He has received the Cultural Traditions Award (1992) and the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry (2002). Other publications include an edition of The Collected Poems of John Hewitt (1991), and the anthologies Poets from the North of Ireland (1979; 1990), Northern Windows: An Anthology of Ulster Autobiography (1987) and The Blackbird’s Nest: An Anthology of Poems from Queen’s University, Belfast (2006). He edited the periodical The Honest Ulsterman from 1969 to 1989. His John Hewitt: Selected Poems, co-edited with Michael Longley, is forthcoming.

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