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BY NINA PELAEZ

In print | Published April 29, 2010

On the evening of April 20, dozens of students and faculty from Swarthmore flocked to nearby Villanova University to attend a reading by renowned Irish poets Peter Fallon and Seamus Heaney. The event was packed with poets, students, academics and locals, all eager to hear the poets share their work.

The reading was part of the 12th Annual Villanova Literary Festival. Fallon and Heaney’s readings were the only event entirely sold out, and also broadcast in the VU cinema.

“I was thrilled we had such a large group of people [from Swarthmore] make it to the reading,” English literature professor Nathalie Anderson said. Over 32 students and faculty members made the trek from Swarthmore over to Villanova to hear the two poets read their work.

“It was really exciting to have that many people sharing that particular experience,” Anderson said.
Students who attended the reading expressed their enthusiasm for the two poets. “Seamus Heaney is legendary, and I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to hear him read,” Hadley Roach ’11 said.
The two poets are extremely significant figures in the canon of contemporary Irish poetry. Both painted a rich landscape of their homeland through the poems they read, whilst weaving amidst them stories and laughter.

“You could get a real sense of the humor with which they face everything in life. The way that humor accepts tribulations by setting it aside … I see that as a characteristic for both,” Anderson said.
The reading was moving not only because of the exquisite lyricism and imagery of the poetry, but because it was filled with warm moments between the two poets and Jim Murphy, the founder of the Irish Studies Program at Villanova.

“I think it sweetened the experience because those three men know each other so well and have such a long history with each other,” Anderson said.

Fallon began the reading, sharing poems that showed sensitivity to the rural landscape from which he came. Fallon, who was born in Germany, grew up on a farm in County Meath, Ireland. At the age of 18, he founded the Gallery Press, which has come to be recognized as the most significant publishing company in Ireland.

“I enjoyed Peter Fallon a great deal,” Michael Duffy ’11 said. “I had never heard his work before but I found him to be a very gentle and gracious writer.”

Seamus Heaney began his reading with the poem “Digging,” which he described as an effort for him to defend the practice of writing. Heaney also hails from a rural background, having grown up on a farm in the County of Derry.

Roach described Heaney’s style and the elements that have drawn her to his work.

“One of my favorite things about Heaney’s style is his dirtiness and I mean that in a sodden, boggy, frogspawn-filled sense,” Roach said. She continued by describing his opening piece as emblematic of his work.

“He’s very much a poet of the soil, and so it was really cool to hear him begin the reading with ‘Digging,’” she said. “It gives all kinds of insight into the rest of his writing, connecting generations of turf-work to his pen.”

The reading was filled with a resonant energy that came from the personal connections between the poets.

“It was immediately clear how much [the three poets] enjoyed the chance to read together, and how much their writing had been shaped by a sense of community,” Roach said.

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