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Anahorish, California, Castledawson, grandmother, Memoir, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Ordinary Things, Poetry, Seamus Heaney, Seamus Heaney, Themes of Childhood
doing a dance for seamus heaney
Ironing shirts, folding sheets, the mundane tasks that Seamus Heaney transformed into magical spots of time that make me think of my mother back in Castledawson, County Derry a great armful of sheets rescued from the clothes-line before the rain begins to fall. Then, the folding, a precise ritual, my father her partner in a dance handed down from one generation…
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Anahorish, Anahorish, Antrim, Arizona, Bellaghy, Borders, British Army, Broagh, Castledawson, Dennis O'Driscoll, Fosterling, From the Republic of Conscience, grandmother, IRA, Language matters, Loss, Love, Memoir, Memoir, Memory, Mother Daughter Relationship, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, Personal Helicon, Poetry, Politics, Sectarianism, The Good Friday Agreement, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Tony Parker, Writing
back to Anahorish ~ Seamus Heaney’s ‘first hill in the world’
Our poet, Seamus Heaney, will be buried in Bellaghy tomorrow evening, his body brought home from Dublin to rest next to the grave of his little brother, Christopher, whom many of us know from “Mid-Term Break,” a poem now learned by heart by Irish children in schools North or South of the border. The first time, I heard Mid-Term Break, was…
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Blogging, Educating Rita, Field of Dreams, Goodfellas, grandmother, Health Activist Writer's Challenge 2013, Memoir, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Soundtracks of our Lives, The Deer Hunter, The Natural, The Troubles, Themes of Childhood, Versatile Blogger Awards, Writing
Congratulations. A reprise.
On this, the penultimate day of a month long writing challenge, I am resorting to cheating, and I am going to plagiarize a post I wrote not too long ago. The nice folks over at WEGO are asking for some self-congratulatory smugness, having completed (almost) thirty posts in thirty days, giving us free reign to wax lyrical about our own awesomeness.…
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Family, grandmother, Health Activist Writer's Challenge 2013, Memoir, Memoir, Memory, Mother Daughter Relationship, Northern Ireland, Soundtracks of our Lives, television, Writing
this is your life in a big red book
Can biography evolve to meet our current demands? Has the internet killed off the demand for the authoritative? In an age of best-selling celebrity memoir, does anyone still care what Shakespeare had for breakfast? asks Guardian columnist Kathryn Holeywell as she ponders the state of the art of biography. For the record, I care what Shakespeare had for breakfast and many of…
