The Seamus Heaney Memorial Lecture is a signature event in the Keough-Naughton Institute's year. Seamus Heaney spoke twice at Notre Dame, and this annual event honors his memory and his outstanding contributions to Irish and world literature.
Dr. Rosie Lavan, Lecturer, Trinity College Dublin, will deliver the Heaney Memorial Lecture for the 2020-2021 academic year. Dr. Lavan worked as a journalist between earning her bachelor's degree from the University of Oxford and returning there for postgraduate study. Her recent book, Seamus Heaney and Society (Oxford University Press, 2020), aims to re-situate Seamus Heaney’s work in its varied textual, cultural, institutional, and political contexts, paying close attention to his early journalism and work for radio and television, and to his key institutional affiliations in publishing, broadcasting, and education in Ireland, Britain, and the United States. Dr. Lavan is currently co-editing, with Bernard O’Donoghue, the poems of Seamus Heaney for Faber & Faber.
In this lecture, Dr. Lavan will examine Heaney’s poetry of collective experience during the time of his mid- to late career. Her particular focus will be the poem "From the Canton of Expectation" in The Haw Lantern (1987).
Respondent and Moderator: Clíona Ní Ríordáin, Professor of English, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, Fall 2018.
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