Crediting Poetry: The Nobel Lecture

by Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney's Nobel Lecture, captured here in Crediting Poetry , is a powerful defense of poetry as "the ship and the anchor" of our spirit within an ocean of violent, divisive politics and "world-sorrow." Beginning with the "creaturely existence" of his childhood in a thatched farmstead in rural County Derry, Heaney traces his path in "the wideness of language." It is a way forged by to the "burbles and squeaks" of BBC and Radio Eireann from a wireless speaker, to the triple-rhyme in a line of Yeats', but also to the sound of gunfire in Ulster and the keening desolation of all the "wounded spots on the face of the earth." Out of all these sounds Heaney discovers the necessity of poetic order--"an order where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew."

It is poetry's ability to convey the forces of the marvelous and the murderous together, Heaney writes, that gives it "at once a buoyancy and a holding," and persuades us of its "truth to life." Heaney's lecture not only finds a way of crediting poetry "without anxiety or apology," but it persuades us, eloquently and gracefully, of the "rightness" and "thereness" of our veritable human being.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Essays, Criticism

53 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Works of Irish poet Seamus Justin Heaney reflect landscape, culture, and political crises of his homeland and include the collections Wintering Out (1972) and Field Work (1979) as well as a translation of Beowulf (1999). He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995.

This writer and lecturer won this prize "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."

Heaney on Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Sidharth Vardhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We want what the woman wanted in the prison queue in Leningrad, standing there blue with cold and whispering for fear, enduring the terror of Stalin’s regime and asking the poet Anna Akhmatova if she could describe it all, if her art could be equal to it. And this is the want I too was experiencing in those far more protected circumstances in Co. Wicklow when I wrote the lines I have just quoted, a need for poetry that would merit the definition of it I gave a few moments ago, as an order “true to the impact of external reality and … sensitive to the inner laws of the poet’s being.”

[Ry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dude can write. The works of great poets are fun to read because they don’t throw around words, they choose with care every word they write.

[Francisca · Rating 5 out of 5]

i might change the rating with time but, at the moment, i loved this.

seamus heaney's lecture after winning the nobel prize in 1995 had everything i have grown to love from his writing: politics withouth actually being in your face, an almost too subtle love for nature, nationalistic hope more than pride, and, more importantly, his appreciation of poetry as movement through music and sounds. in fifty pages, it moved me in a way his poetry has persistently done just as well in the past.

nobel lectures should be a genre on itself (gabriel garcía marquez' one is spectacular too--although i don't know whether it's available in translation or not) which only continues to agravate me after bob dylan's win and disrespectful reaction afterwards. this is the speech of a lifetime and it's the greatest opportunity an author might get of getting his view across beyond the rooms of a lecture hall. and heaney's point was exactly the one for his poetry was recognised in the first place: a love for his country and poetry and music, all wrapped into a single body.

[T P Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent little volume. His prose sings in a manner reminiscent of his poetry. It's humorous, serious and eloquent. My only regret is that it's so brief.

[Jean Carlton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lately I’ve been attempting to learn more about poets and poetry; reading and listening to poetry, exploring the craft through writing some myself. In this effort I sought names of “famous” or respected poets and that’s how I heard of Seamus Heaney. This short volume is the speech he gave in Stockholm as he accepted the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. I was pleased to be able to relate to what he had to say about Irish history (which would not have been true before my trip to Ireland and related study) but other parts of it were a bit over my head – as is much poetry. The learning continues.

[Sanjuro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heaney is possibly my favorite poet. This, the lecture he gave when he accepted his Nobel Prize, is a quick but compelling read. The primary point of the lecture is to argue that poetry, although not always "the truth," is equal to "the truth" in that its goal is to express external reality while also being sensitive to the poet's internal perception of both external reality and himself. His examples are compelling. I think, one thing I struggle with is my own hopeful interpretation of a line near the end of the lecture that is likely not quite what he meant. Heaney spoke in the beginning about being a kid, and listening to the news on the radio, and not quite grasping the gravity and politics of it all. At the end of the lecture he said that, when he writes poetry, he is still that kid sitting on his sofa. He likely meant simply that he must process truth into his poetry only in the way he knows how - only in the way he perceives the world and its events. I like to think there was also a semblance of an anti-politic in there, that he also writes poetry as one who can perceive and record the world without getting wrapped up in the politics and weight of it all. That's likely an overread on my part, but I think it's a beautiful idea.

[Lauma Lapa · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a truly excellent way of speaking about what poetry is. Re-reading this gets my hopes a little off the ground.

In one of the poems best known to students in my generation, a poem which could be said to have taken the nutrients of the symbolist movement and made them available in capsule form, the American poet Archibald MacLeish affirmed that "A poem should be equal to/not true." As a defiant statement of poetry's gift for telling truth but telling it slant, this is both cogent and corrective. Yet there are times when a deeper need enters, when we want the poem to be not only pleasurably right but compellingly wise, not only a surprising variation played upon the world, but a re-tuning of the world itself. We want the surprise to be transitive like the impatient thump which unexpectedly restores the picture to the television set, or the electric shock which sets the fibrillating heart back to its proper rhythm.

[Samira · Rating 4 out of 5]

From Northern Ireland. grew up surrounded by violence, where violence and politics were essential. How do you read poetry in these circumstances? Human beings need hope, love, and purpose in a world where violence and suffering are present. He argues that poetry can provide sensitivity and make us more attuned to the emotions of others, and of course our own emotions. In a society with violence, individuals are desensitized, therefore poetry can be a positive factor in creating positive emotions.

He argues that poetry makes us see the world in new ways and can inspire us to change it for the better. retune to life and the world.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It knows that the massacre will happen again on the roadside, that the workers in the minibus are going to be lined up and shot down just after quitting time; but it also credits as a reality the squeeze of the hand, the actuality of sympathy and protectiveness between living creatures. It satisfies the contradictory needs which consciousness experiences at times of extreme crisis, the need on the one hand for a truth telling that will be hard and retributive, and on the other hand, the need not to harden the mind to a point where it denies its own yearnings for sweetness and trust.”

[Fionnbharr Rodgers · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can listen to this lecture on YouTube, which I also recommend as Heaney’s voice is very pleasant listening; but his words need to be metabolises over a great span than real-time players will allow. ‘It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir,’ is one such gem.

[Christopher Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a profound respect for him and his impact. He's one of those poets that managed to make the mundane come alive, and I love that. He captured the story of people who weren't traditionally having their story told. Plus, you can just tell that he's off the charts intelligent.

[Corinne Fowler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sorry to say that I found the book to be kind of boring. It was tedious to me. But I think poets and academics will see something in it that I missed.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is as dry a selection of writing as I have ever read. Do yourself a favor and read the one Toni Morrison or Gabriel García Márquez gave instead.

[Mark Mullee · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're questioning poetry's validity in a cruel world such as ours, Seamus Heaney has a thing or two to tell you. His Nobel lecture is a defense of poetry's role amidst all the sorrow & killing & injury. In brief: poetry is valuable to us for its "power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in spite of the evidence of wrongness all around it." And so we are able to acknowledge the misery of our world & live with the pain--without despair.

If you never once in your life questioned the value of poetry, you'd like this book as well.


(note: author is Seamus Heaney, not "Anonymous")

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the Nobel lecture that Heaney gave when he won the Nobel Prize for literature (poetry). It is purportedly about the role of poetry in everyday life, but I didn't understand much of what he was talking about when I read it several years ago.

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seamus Heaney's Nobel Prize Lecture explores the role of poetry in the turmoil of life, placing his work and the work of W. B. Yeats in the conflicted history of Northern Ireland.

A short, but thought provoking, piece.

[Justin Wiggins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I purchased a copy of this at the Seamus Heaney HomePlace in Ireland, and finished reading it at Slemish mountain on a cold Autumn day looking out on the beautiful Irish countryside. This book brings back that very special memory.

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent speech.

[Richard Goodman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just wonderful.

[Nicola · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hardwon inspiration.

[iosephvs bibliothecarivs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read in memory of Mr. Heaney, on the day after his death.

[Margaret Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

This seamlessly-crafted 29-page homage to the humanizing power of poetry presents a rock-solid defense of the role of the poetic in this world we inhabit.