Saturday 21 January 2012

Seamus Heaney: being a poet is like being a footballer

I once had the chance to meet Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, who was asked how he feels about the way people interpret his poems. He had already told us how his metaphor of a pen being "snug as a gun" was taken to have a range of deep political meanings and strike a comparison between those that fight and those who do not, but do what they can; when really he just liked the metaphor. His reply to the student's question was that writing poetry was like a football match(!): during the game players run around and do what they know how to do, and afterwards everyone else gets to watch the replays and over-analyse.

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