Seamus Heaney: a Conference and Commemoration
10-13th April 2014
The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at the School of English
Queen’s University Belfast
The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at the School of English is organising a major event, ‘Seamus Heaney: a Conference and Commemoration’ from 10-13th April 2014, to coincide with Seamus’s 75th birthday and the tenth anniversary of the opening of the Centre. The conference will be a celebration of Seamus’s work, and will provide an opportunity for an extended discussion both of his contribution to literature, and of his legacy for future generations of poets, critics and general readers.
Among those who have already agreed to participate are the poets Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon, Ireland Professor of Poetry Paula Meehan, the UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Paul Durcan, Gerald Dawe, Nick Laird, Don Paterson and David Wheatley, as well as the poets from the Seamus Heaney Centre (Sinéad Morrissey, Leontia Flynn, Medbh McGuckian & Ciaran Carson), and the critics Jahan Ramazani, Angela Leighton, Neil Corcoran and Peter McDonald.
The conference will deal with all aspects of Seamus Heaney’s writing, most obviously his poetry, but also his work as critic, as translator, as dramatist and as broadcaster. The conference will have a particular emphasis on assessing his legacy and the lines of his influence running into future generations.
We welcome proposals for 20 minute papers on topics including (but not limited to) the following areas which should in each case be understood as including appropriate contexts for Heaney’s work:
Heaney as poet;
Heaney as critic;
Heaney as dramatist;
Heaney and translation;
Heaney as broadcaster;
Heaney and the classics;
Heaney’s Irish and British contexts;
Heaney and America;
Heaney and European poetry;
Heaney in comparative perspective;
Heaney and the politics of poetry;
Heaney and the teaching of poetry;
Heaney and music
Proposals of 250-300 words should be sent to g.hellawell@qub.ac.uk
by 15 January 2014. Suggestions for panels will also be welcome. Proposals should include the full name, institutional affiliation, and email address of the proposer. We aim to inform those whose proposals have been accepted by the end of January 2014; for this reason there will be no second call for papers.
The conference website can be found at: http://go.qub.ac.uk/heaneyconference