In my early teens, I acquired a kind of representative status: went on behalf of the family to wakes and funerals and so on. And I would be counted on as an adult contributor when it came to farm work - the hay in the summertime, for example.
From Seamus Heaney
I suppose you inevitably fall into habits of expression.
One doesn't want one's identity coerced.
I feel myself part of something. Not only being part of a community but part of an actual moment and a movement of Irish writing and art. That sense of being part of the whole thing is the deepest joy.
You can have Irish identity in the north and also have your Irish passport.
I think the first little jolt I got was reading Gerard Manley Hopkins - I liked other poems... but Hopkins was kind of electric for me - he changed the rules with speech, and the whole intensity of the language was there and so on.
One of the best descriptions of the type of writer I am was given by Tom Paulin, who described himself as a 'binge' writer - like a binge drinker. I go on binges.
To encounter 'Beowulf' is like taking a sledgehammer to a quarry face. You must bang in there.
As a young poet, you need corroboration, and that's what publication does.
I came from a farming background, and my career was teaching.
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