by Kathy A. Callahan
Not a dry eye in Seamus Heaney’s ‘House’ last night as we paid tribute to him at St Anne’s Warehouse. From the front row, I turned around and saw 600 mournful faces awash in a sea of gratitude and appreciation. I looked up and saw poets and writers on the stage who served as readers of Seamus Heaney’s Favorite poems.
Irish Actor, Irish Arts Center Patron Gabriel Byrne, lead the tribute in a soothing voice from the front of the room. I could see it coming…We would all be IN TREATMENT soon. Not a tissue box in site or a pair of sunglasses to wear.
Irish Arts Center (IAC) and St. Ann’s Warehouse presented Favorite Poems—In Tribute to Seamus Heaney, as part of the Center’s fifth annual IAC PoetryFest (cosponsored by the Poetry Society of America).
Colum McCann read ‘Digging’ and we all went there, together. Kevin Holohan brought us back to ‘Summer of 69’. Marie Howe read from where Seamus Heaney met me in Lawrence MA at ‘Eye Level’. Paul Muldoon read ‘The White Wash Brush’
….’Clearances’ ‘Squarings 2 and 3’ ‘Bog Man and Bog Women…
Paul Muldoon closed the evening with a story about the first time he ‘bumped into’ Seamus Heaney in a yellow cab situation in NYC but he didn’t know it, yet. Later on that evening he walked into Tabla and met Seamus Heaney for the first time at the bar. Or so he thought. Seamus got up close to Paul, roaring, ‘You’re that guy in the yellow cab!’
Paul Muldoon transformed reading names into -on the spot poetry. Gabriel Byrne, Alice McDermott, Colum McCann, Enda Walsh, Mark Doty, Conor O’Callaghan, Kevin Holohan, Maria Howe, Nick Laird, Megan O’Rourke, Sean Sweeney, Bernhard O’Donough, Colette Bryce, Henri Cole, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Brenda Shaughnessy, Matthew Sweeney, and Craig Morgan Teicher.
Irish Arts Center (IAC) and St. Ann’s Warehouse presented Favorite Poems—In Tribute to Seamus Heaney, as part of the Center’s fifth annual IAC PoetryFest (cosponsored by the Poetry Society of America).
Please see more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23708#sthash.GohL7f50.dpuf…TBC
Irish American Writers and Artists Members supported the event in full. Honor Molloy, Alexis Doyle, Tom Mahon, Kevin Holohan and Colum McCann. To name just a few.