The Poetry of Grief

One of Heaney's most moving and beloved works is "Mid-Term Break," his elegy to his brother Christopher who tragically passed away in a road accident at the age of 4, in which, with beautiful clarity and detail, the poet illustrates the sights, sounds and feelings of a schoolboy experiencing his first bereavement.

This talk will focus on Heaney returning to this painful memory ten years late in his first collection Death of a Naturalist and how its inclusion colours the work's journey from childhood innocence to adult experience. Forty years later, a lone blackbird stands to remind Heaney of his brother in The Blackbird of Glanmore, in District and Circle. In comparing these poems, we discover how Heaney moves from an intimate close-up of grief to a reflective repose decades later. In-between, we shall uncover how they connect to his greater body of work, especially in his various elegies, and how the power of poetry can stand as a monument to those gone and a balm to those who remain.

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Host or Publisher National Library of Ireland