I am listening to a podcast from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) from their Writers and Company show. Eleanor Wachtel, the host is interviewing Seamus Heaney – well how could she as he died a few years ago! Well, This interview is from 2010 and he died in 2013 and this interview will last as long as the gods of the CBC allow it to live. My first intersection with the mind and talent of this poet was his translation of Beowulf. I purchased that in one of my rare bursts of having actual spare money and I don’t remember why . . . there is a more traditional translation of Beowulf somewhere in the house as my wife studied Old English in university for a time. But the idea of a new translation of one of the eldest of English poems attracted me. My surname is Smith and one of my wife’s profs assured her that the word ‘smith’ is of Old English provenance. This integrated a new and personal myth into my ethos: that I am Anglo-Saxon ethnically speaking. Of course my name may have been changed by some long ago migrant, or may have been the German Schmidt…. who knows? I do know my forbears have borne this name since at least the 1630s.
Anyway, I have not finished listening to the podcast, but at the point I have reached, Seamus Heaney reads from one of his poems: A Sofa in the 40s. I saw danger immediately. ‘Danger!’ you say. ‘Yes, Danger!’ I reply. I started writing poetry again about ten years ago and avoided reading anyone else’s poems. I am weak willed and found that when writing, I would often unavoidably, or unconsciously, imitate the style of whomever I had just read.
But in the past two years I have found my own poetic voice and style, and this danger had dissipated. Well, dissipated until I heard Heaney reading this poem on the podcast. Even the title of this post shows the danger: those are his words spoken in this podcast about this poem! Not my words! DANGER!
Bookstory 