Podcasts about seamus heaney centre

Stephen Sexton is an Irish poet and a lecturer at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University Belfast. While on campus in March 2025 he sat down with the Center for Irish Studies Director Joseph Lennon to discuss howpoetry can help us navigate the world. He reads poems from his two books ___________________Stephen Sexton the author of two books of poems – If All the World and Love Were Young, published in 2019 and Cheryl's Destinies, published in 2021.  He is a recipient of multipleawards, which include winning the National Poetry Competition in 2016, the Eric Gregory Award in 2018, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Shine / Strong Award for Best First Collection in 2019, the E. M. Forster Awardfrom the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2020.   Sexton has been teaching creative writing at the ⁠Seamus Heaney Centre⁠ for Poetry at Queen's University Belfast for six years.  Sexton was ten years old when the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 brought a formal end to the Troubles in the North of Ireland, which later in life made him realize that he was growing up in a time that he did not understand, and he became aware of a profound generational divide between him and his parents.  Sexton explains that in a sense, there is a “kind of ghostly history that is all around you, but you can't access it in the same way that other people can, so as a consequence, it doesn't necessarily show up in my writing.”  In his book, If All the World and Love Were Young, which happens to be set in 1998, there is one moment that addresses the Omagh bombing – a single deadliest attack in thirty years of violence that he remembers hearing about on the radio and then seeingon television.  But beyond that, the book is a blend of childhood memories that uses the analogy of a nineties Nintendo videogame, Mario Brothers, that digs into Sexton's more personal recollections about the house that he grew up in and memories of his mother.   Sexton's more recent book of poems, Cheryl's Destinies, was written during the COVID lockdown, where he explored a desire to bring together the improbable and the sensitive, hence the section of poems that imagines a collaboration between Billy Corgan lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins and Irish poet W.B Yeats. The book's general theme of being obsessed with and anxious about the future came through the conversations between two strangers separated by a century, where they discuss the difficulty of making art. Sexton's book questions the role of a poet and its connection to the role of a medium, as they both perform a similar function -- look at the world and interpret it.

In this episode of The Writing Life, poets Rebecca Goss and Heidi Williamson discuss using place as a vessel to write about difficult subjects and memories in poetry. Rebecca Goss is a poet, tutor and mentor, living in Suffolk. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals, anthologies and have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Arts online. Her third full-length collection, Girl, was published with Carcanet/Northern House in 2019 and was shortlisted in the East Anglian Book Awards 2019. Her fourth full-length collection, Latch, was published in 2023. Heidi Williamson's first collection Electric Shadow was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize. Heidi works with poets worldwide by Skype as a Poetry Surgeon for The Poetry Society, teaches for The Poetry School, and mentors writers through the National Centre for Writing. In this podcast, Rebecca and Heidi discuss the moments they knew they were ready to write about their past experiences, and the power that comes from giving yourself permission to feel the happiness alongside the pain when writing about difficult moments in their lives. They also explore the importance of drawing from memories of landscape and place, the power of quietness in poetry, and how researching for writing may initially feel inauthentic but is actually a powerful tool for building depth. 

An audio description by Soso Ní Cheallaigh “De mo neamhthoil a thánaig an crith orm” “How does it feel to never truly be still?” Part of Bounce Festival 2024 at CCA Derry~Londonderry on 5 October 2024 where Soso performed in CCA's Project Space amidst their installation. Responding to the essential tremor and involuntary contractions that convulse through their own body, this work is part of Soso Ní Cheallaigh's ongoing study on the chaos and disorder of their rare nervous system conditions. This new site specific work combines video installation with live intervention to explore self-documentation, bodily isolation, and our inherent human need to understand ourselves. De mo neamhthoil was supported in part by the European Dancehouse Network Carte Blanche Travel Award. Proud part of the Bounce Arts Festival 2024. About Soso Ní Cheallaigh Soso Ní Cheallaigh (they/them) is a disability-led multidisciplinary maker from Derry. Their work spans poetry, essay, theatre, visual art, and film through both the English and Irish language. Recent credits include Burkitt (TG4/Little Ease Films), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Lyric Theatre), and SHIFT (DU Dance & Southpaw Dance Company). A graduate of Seamus Heaney Centre and Inclusive Dance Cork, Soso was a previous recipient of University of Atypical's DDASF award, Arts Council of Northern Ireland funding, and a Theatre and Dance NI INVEST artist for 2024.ohbysoso.com About Bounce Festival Bounce Arts Festival 4–6 October 2024 - This is a festival created by and for disabled, d/Deaf and neurodivergent people through the University of Atypical. This year it is taking place over three days in Belfast, Derry~Londonderry and Limavady. Transcending barriers, celebrating ability and disability; disturbing myths and illuminating the creative practice of disabled artists on a professional platform: Bounce is our showcase where every aspect of diverse identity is celebrated. All are welcome.universityofatypical.org/bounce Supported by Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Derry City & Strabane District Council, University of ATypical, European Dancehouse Network Carte Blanche Travel Award.

Mícheál McCann is a poet from Derry City. His poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Poetry Review, Queering the Green and elsewhere. He is the author of Safe Home (Green Bottle Press, 2020), Keeper (Fourteen Publishing, 2022) and Waking Light (Skein Press, 2022) alongside Kerri ní Dochartaigh. He is the co-editor of Hold Open the Door (UCD Press, 2020), Trumpet (Poetry Ireland, 2020), the founding editor of catflap, and will be the editor of Poetry Ireland Review in summer 2024. His first collection of poems, Devotion, is forthcoming with The Gallery Press in May 2024.    Bebe Ashley lives in County Down. Her work is recently published in Granta, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review, and Modern Poetry in Translation. Her debut collection Gold Light Shining is published by Banshee Press and her second collection forthcoming in 2025. In 2023, Bebe received the Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment (Text) and a Creative Practitioner Bursary from Belfast City Council. Her 3D-printed Braille poems will be featured in a six-month exhibition at the Museum of Literature Ireland from February 2024. www.bebe-ashley.com   Dara McWade is a writer and workshop facilitator from Dublin, living in Belfast. He writes fiction and screenplays. His work can be found on BBC Radio Ulster, the Books Beyond Boundaries NI Anthology, and in the Apiary magazine, where he currently serves as editor-in-chief. He is the co-writer of the upcoming animated short “To Break a Circle,” and currently studies as a PhD candidate at Queen's University Belfast. Dara McWade

Ezekiel 37:1-14 Acts 2:1-21 John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15 Psalm 104:25-35, 37 Tess Taylor, an avid gardener, is the author of five acclaimed collections of poetry including Work & Days, which was named one of the 10 best books of poetry of 2016 by the New York Times. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, Tin House, The Times Literary Supplement, CNN, and the New York Times. Taylor has been Distinguished Fulbright US Scholar at the Seamus Heaney Centre in Queen's University in Northern Ireland, and the Anne Spencer Poet-in-Residence at Randolph College. She has also served as on-air poetry reviewer for NPR's All Things Considered for over a decade. Taylor lives in El Cerrito, California, where she tends to fruit trees and backyard chickens.

In this episode of The Poetry Exchange, we talk with one of poetry's greatest leading lights, Malika Booker, about the poem that has been a friend to her: ‘The Domestic Science of Sunday Dinner' by Lorna Goodison.Malika Booker, currently based in Leeds, is a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, a British poet of Guyanese and Grenadian Parentage, and co-founder of Malika's Poetry Kitchen (A writer's collective). Her pamphlet Breadfruit, (flippedeye, 2007) received a Poetry Society recommendation and her poetry collection Pepper Seed (Peepal Tree Press, 2013) was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre 2014 prize for first full collection. She is published with the Poets Sharon Olds and Warsan Shire in The Penguin Modern Poet Series 3: Your Family: Your Body (2017). A Cave Canem Fellow, and inaugural Poet in Residence at The Royal Shakespeare Company, Malika was awarded the Cholmondeley Award (2019) for outstanding contribution to poetry and elected a Royal Society of Literature Fellow (2022).Malika has won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem TWICE: in 2020 for 'The Little Miracles' (Magma, 2019), and most recently in 2023 for 'Libation', which you can hear her read in this episode.'Libation' was first published in The Poetry Review (112:4). ‘The Domestic Science of Sunday Dinner' by Lorna Goodison is published in Turn Thanks by Lorna Goodison, University of Illinois Press, 1999.You can read the full text of ‘The Domestic Science of Sunday Dinner' on our website.P.S. don't forget you can pre-order your copy of Poems as Friends – The Poetry Exchange 10th Anniversary Anthology – which is published by Quercus Editions on 9th May 2024. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we are chatting with bestselling author Carol McGrath. She's written books like The Handfasted Wife and Sex and Sexuality in Tudor England. We had a good long discussion with Carol but there were some audio issues which forced us to cut down the episode. Hopefully you still enjoy the interview! To make up for the slightly shorter episode, we'll be dropping an extra BONUS episode next week in which we read out some dodgy reviews of our own books, so look out for that, it's just a bit of fun... Carol McGrath - Following a first degree in English and History, Carol McGrath completed an MA in Creative Writing from The Seamus Heaney Centre, Queens University Belfast, followed by an MPhil in English from University of London The Handfasted Wife, first in a trilogy about the royal women of 1066 was shortlisted for the RoNAS in 2014. The Swan-Daughter and The Betrothed Sister complete this highly acclaimed trilogy. https://carolcmcgrath.co.uk/

Dans ce dernier épisode, nous évoquons la situation en Irlande du Nord depuis l'accord du Vendredi Saint de 1998. Celui-ci avait permis l'instauration d'une administration autonome et le partage du pouvoir. Aujourd'hui, le Royaume-Uni, auquel appartient toujours l'Irlande du Nord, a quitté l'Europe et la frontière avec la République d'Irlande, qui avait pratiquement disparu à la suite des accords de paix, est devenue une ligne de démarcation avec l'Union européenne. Etienne Duval revient en compagnie de plusieurs des intervenants sur ce quart de siècle de paix fragile. Nous retrouvons Laurent Colantonio, professeur d'histoire irlandaise à l'Université du Québec à Montréal, Agnès Maillot, professeure à la Dublin City University, Aaron Edwards, de l'Université de Leicester et Glenn Patterson, romancier, journaliste, professeur au Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry de la Queens University de Belfast. Dimanche 27 mars à 23h05 sur RTS Deux, vous pourrez voir "Le jeu de la vérité", un documentaire réalisé par Fabienne Lips-Dumas (Belgique, 2021). A voir aussi dès aujourd'hui en cliquant sur le lien ci-contre. Résumé du film: Durant les trente ans du conflit nord-irlandais, face à la violence des factions paramilitaires unionistes et indépendantistes, la réponse des Britanniques s'est appuyée sur la propagande et une armée d'agents secrets infiltrés. Aujourd'hui, acteurs et victimes dénoncent un contre-terrorisme qui a dérogé au cadre légal de l'Etat de droit. Sur cette photo tirée du film "Le jeu de la vérité", on peut voir un graffiti signifiant "Attention! La délation peut nuire gravement à votre santé."

Après avoir évoqué l'histoire de l'Irlande, nous nous rendons sur place, à Belfast, capitale de l'Irlande du Nord. Etienne Duval est allé à la rencontre de Glenn Patterson. Romancier, journaliste, professeur au Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry de la Queens University, à Belfast. Avant ce rendez-vous, il a visité un musée méconnu, celui des colons écossais protestants d'Irlande du Nord, les "Ulster Scots", une communauté dont descend l'auteur. David Gilliland, directeur du musée, relate l'histoire de cette communauté dont les membres se retrouvent régulièrement pour écouter des airs de cornemuse. Illustration: drapeau des Ulster Scots. Il existe plusieurs drapeaux assez différents représentant les Ulster Scots, les colons protestants écossais d'Irlande du Nord. Une constante cependant: la main rouge de l'Ulster. Sur celui-ci, on trouve également une feuille de chardon, plante dont la fleur est l'emblème de l'Ecosse. Enfin le fond bleu à croix blanche est celui du drapeau écossais. (© Citizen69/wikimedia )

The Write Night Podcast is a new regular series from the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University Belfast, adapted from Andrew Rahal's popular pandemic newsletter. His is a voice in the void, sharing moments of reflection and insight into a writing life. In this episode, originally published on the 10th of February 2021, Andrew asks us to consider the people we write to, and those we write for.  The Write Night Podcast is written and hosted by Andrew Rahal, and produced by  Conor McCafferty, Dara McWade and Rachel Brown, with music by Connie Gavin. If you would like to join the Write Night Family, you can sign up for the newsletter at our website, https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/seamus-heaney-centre/.  Thank you for listening. 

For our Winter 2021-22 issue, Editor-at-large Thomas Morris invited four authors to each write a short story in a single night: starting at dusk and submitting by dawn. On this month's episode of the podcast, he is joined by three of those authors – Marie-Helene Bertino, Rebecca Ivory, and Stephen Sexton – who read from their ‘One Night Stands' and discuss what happens when you stay up all night to write a story. Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of the novels Parakeet and 2 a.m. at The Cat's Pajamas, and the story collection Safe as Houses. Her alien opus novel Beautyland is forthcoming from FSG in 2022. She lives in New York. Rebecca Ivory lives in Dublin and writes short fiction. Her stories have appeared in The Stinging Fly, Banshee, The Tangerine and Fallow Media. Stephen Sexton is the author of two books of poetry: If All the World and Love Were Young; and most recently Cheryl's Destinies. He teaches at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University, Belfast. Jon McGregor is the fourth author who wrote us a story in a single night. Jon was unfortunately unwell on the evening we recorded the podcast, so couldn't participate. But happily, he's on the mend now! You can read Jon's story, and all the astonishing One Night Stands, in our Winter 2021-22 issue. And you can read Thomas Morris's introduction to the stories here.

The Write Night Podcast is a new regular series from the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University Belfast, adapted from Andrew Rahal's popular pandemic newsletter. His is a voice in the void, sharing moments of reflection and insight into a writing life. In this episode, originally published on the 2nd of February 2021, Andrew discusses the pandemic's effects on writing communities, and the centrality of the Writer's Workshop.   The Write Night Podcast is written and hosted by Andrew Rahal, and produced by  Conor McCafferty, Dara McWade and Rachel Brown, with music by Connie Gavin. If you would like to join the Write Night Family, you can sign up for the newsletter at our website, https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/seamus-heaney-centre/.  Thank you for listening. 

The Write Night Podcast is a new regular series from the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University Belfast, adapted from Andrew Rahal's popular pandemic newsletter. His is a voice in the void, sharing moments of reflection and insight into a writing life. In this episode, originally published on the 16th April, 2021, Andrew discusses Death, and the ways writers have dealt with it in their work.    The Write Night Podcast is written and hosted by Andrew Rahal, and produced by  Conor McCafferty, Dara McWade and Rachel Brown, with music by Connie Gavin. If you would like to join the Write Night Family, you can sign up for the newsletter at our website, https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/seamus-heaney-centre/.  Thank you for listening. 

The Write Night Podcast is a new regular series from the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University Belfast, adapted from Andrew Rahal's popular pandemic newsletter. His is a voice in the void, sharing moments of reflection and insight into a writing life. In this episode, originally published on the 13th October 2020, Andrew discusses the Autumn, and its presence in works of prose and poetry both.  The Write Night Podcast is written and hosted by Andrew Rahal, and produced by  Conor McCafferty, Dara McWade and Rachel Brown, with music by Connie Gavin. If you would like to join the Write Night Family, you can sign up for the newsletter at our website, https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/seamus-heaney-centre/.  Thank you for listening. 

The Write Night Podcast is a new regular series from the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University Belfast, adapted from Andrew Rahal's popular pandemic newsletter. His is a voice in the void, sharing moments of reflection and insight into a writing life.  In this episode, Andrew celebrates the library.  The Write Night Podcast is written and hosted by Andrew Rahal, and produced by  Conor McCafferty, Dara McWade and Rachel Brown, with music by Connie Gavin. Special thanks to the unknown pianist in Belfast Central Library. If you would like to join the Write Night Family, you can sign up for the newsletter at our website, https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/seamus-heaney-centre/ .  Thank you for listening. 

Contributor: Professor Glenn Patterson Talk Title: Writing and the Border Talk Synopsis: This talk looks at how ideas of borders and boundaries have been reflected in Irish literature. It ranges widely across time and genres and includes reflections on works by Spike Milligan, Anna Burns, Patrick Kavanagh and Seamus Heaney. It suggests that ‘fractal-like, the border recurs and recurs' in much of the writing from/about Northern Ireland down the decades and that this divide is ‘repeated and magnified in the divisions between neighbourhoods, or .. internalised as a set of no-goes and sometimes no thinks'. It picks up on Seamus Heaney's observation (from a 1998 documentary for the BBC) that ‘with so much division around, people are forever encountering boundaries that bring them up short' but also the ways in which borders are sometimes bridged, or transgressed. None of this, Glenn Patterson says, is intended as ‘a survey', rather it ‘is a thought taken for a walk… as wayward and eccentric as its subject.' Short Biography: Glenn Patterson is an author and the Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University, Belfast. Further Reading: Ulster Cycle Puckoon – Spike Milligan Song of Erne – Robert Harbinson Milkman – Anna Burns Big Girl, Small Town – Michelle Gallen Borderlands – Brian McGilloway 'A Border-Line Case', Don't Look Now and Other Stories – Daphne du Maurier Finnegans Wake – James Joyce

Nick Laird reads his poem A Mixed Marriage. Nick Laird is the recipient of many prizes for his poetry and fiction, including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. He is on faculty at New York University and Professor of Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University in Belfast.

Unionism at another crossroads:Monday was the birthday of partition. It was a century since the Northern State formally came into existence with the passing into law on May 3, 1921 of the Government of Ireland Act. Unionist parties, the British government and some others tried –unsuccessfully for the most part – to turn this into a birthday celebration. The British government's colonial office in Belfast, the NIO (Northern Ireland Office), not the Executive or Assembly, was given the task of organising this. Some bright spark came up with the idea of using Seamus Heaney and Mary Peters' images under the tagline “Our Story in the Making: NI Beyond 100”. It was supposed to be all about “the spirit of inclusivity, mutual respect and optimism.” It backfired. No-one had asked the Heaney family. The NIO claimed that the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University had given its permission for the portrait to be used but this was denied. There was outrage and uproar with many quoting Seamus Heaney's own words: “Be advised, my passport's green/No glass of ours was ever raised to toast the Queen.” Israel still enforcing apartheid:I make no apologies for returning again to the plight of the Palestinian people living under the yoke of Israeli apartheid laws and policies. Last week Human Rights Watch published a 224 page report on the policies and actions of the Israeli state.

Nick Laird's fiction & poetry have won awards including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Ireland Chair of Poetry Award, the Betty Trask Prize, a Somerset Maugham award, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University in Belfast.

For episode 2 of the Corrymeela Podcast, host Pádraig Ó Tuama talks with the poet Gail McConnell, whose forthcoming collection The Sun Is Open considers an archive-box of her father's writings, clippings, poems and pamphlets. He was murdered by the IRA in 1984. Gail also speaks about creaturely poetry, parenthood, living with loss, and identity. Full transcript of the conversation, and group discussion questions are all available here. Gail McConnell teaches at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University in Belfast. The collection of poetry discussed — The Sun Is Open — will be released by Penned in the Margins in the Autumn of 2021.

Bernie McGill's novel The Watch House was nominated in 2019 for the Ireland/European Prize for Literature and Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes nominated The Butterfly Cabinet as his novel of the year in 2012. Her short fiction has been nominated for several awards and in 2008, she won the Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Award in the United States. Bernie is a former Writing Fellow with the Royal Literary Fund at the Seamus Heaney Centre in Queen's University, Belfast and she teaches and facilitates workshops with the Irish Writers' Centre (one of which is coming up in April of 2021). In this episode, Jenny talks to Bernie about what a typical day in her life is like, what it has meant to her to contribute to anthologies that highlight the work of women writers and how teaching keeps her awake at night!

The archive recordings were selected from the Seamus Heaney Centre's audio collection, and featured music by Ciaran and Deirdre Carson, and Padraigin Ni Uallachain, and words from Seamus Heaney and Ciaran himself. With additional readings from Milena Williamson, Dane Holt and Stephen Sexton. Poems by Ciaran Carson are used by kind permission of The Gallery Press and the Estate of Ciaran Carson. With thanks as always to our guest writers, to Padraigin Ni Uallachain, the Heaney family, the Gallery Press, Gail McConnell, and to Paul Maddern for first collecting these recordings. Special thanks to Deirdre Carson, and the Carson family. 

The Fine Print is a 4 part podcast series by National Museums NI, hosted by Curator of Art, Anna Liesching, which looks at exhibitions held in the Ulster Museum through the prism of the art of printmaking. In this episode, Anna chats to Belfast-based writer Padraig Regan, author of two poetry pamphlets, Delicious and Who Seemed Alive & Altogether Real, and teacher at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queens. Anna and Padraig explore the thinking behind A Unique Silence, an exhibition in the Ulster Museum curated Anna which welcomes six etching by the famed Dutch artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn into the Ulster Museum collection, the practicalities of curating an exhibition during lockdown, and their love of the connection between art and poetry, including a closer look at the term ‘ekphrasis’. For more information on the artists and artworks discussed, take the A Unique Silence Smartify tour here or download the Smartify app and search for the Ulster Museum.

The names alone would fill a book: Bernard McLaverty, Sinead Morrissey, Stewart Parker, Edna Longley, Glenn Patterson, Paul Muldoon, Medbh McGuckian, Ciaran Carson….the list goes on and on. But at its heart is Seamus Heaney and the creative energy of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, encouraging and inspiring new generations. Presented by Professor Glenn Patterson

Featuring new work by Genevieve Stevens, Steven Blythe, Alanna Offield, Kevin O'Farrell, Grace Tower, Lorraine Carey, Tim Dwyer, Rebecca Farmer, Sinead Nolan, Iain Whiteley, Rachel Donati, Julia Wieting, Tom Day, Dide, Stephanie Green, and Erin Vance. With a personal note from Nick Laird.  The Seamus Heaney Poetry Summer School is an annual intensive week of study for emerging poets, hosted by the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's, and led by Professor Nick Laird.  The Seamus Heaney Centre Podcast is created in a small back room by Ian Sansom, Stephen Sexton, and Rachel Brown. This episode was produced by Conor McCafferty. Thanks as always to our writers, and to Nick Boyle for his music.

Welcome to LETTER FROM BELFAST with Belfast writer GLENN PATTERSON, Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen's University and author of BACKSTOP LAND (https://headofzeus.com/books/9781838932022). In this podcast, recorded in Belfast City Hall in October 2019, Glenn reflects on his friendship with Belfast poet Ciaran Carson, the impact of Brexit, and the future of Harland and Wolff. MORE FROM GLENN PATTERSON | Brexit: the Irish Question - A Sense of Place https://soundcloud.com/chromeradio/c360-brexit-the-irish-question-a-sense-of-place-prof-glenn-patterson-14-oct-2017?in=chromeradio/sets/chrome360-brexit-the-irish IMAGES | Glenn Patterson - Head of Zeus | Other images © ChromeRadio. PRODUCTION | ChromeRadio | Producer - Catriona Oliphant | Post-production - Chris Sharp.

Stephen Sexton joins us on this month's episode of the Stinging Fly podcast, to read and discuss two poems by Sinéad Morrissey. Stephen Sexton's debut collection, If All The World And Love Were Young, was published in September 2019 by Penguin, and won The Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection in October. Sexton's first pamphlet, Oils (Emma Press), was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice; he won the UK National Poetry Competition in 2016 with 'The Curfew'; he won an Eric Gregory Award in 2018. He lives in Belfast, where he teaches at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. Sinéad Morrissey was born in Portadown in 1972, grew up in Belfast, and holds a PhD from Trinity College, Dublin. In January 2014, she won the T. S. Eliot Prize for her fifth collection Parallax, and in 2017 she won the Forward Prize for Poetry for her sixth collection On Balance. In 2007, Morrissey was awarded the Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry, while her poem 'Through the Square Window' took first place in the UK National Poetry Competition the same year. She is lecturer in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen's University, Belfast. The Stinging Fly Podcast invites Irish writers to choose a story from the Stinging Fly archive to read and discuss. Previous episodes of the podcast can be found here. The podcast's theme music is ‘Sale of Lakes', by Divan. All of the Stinging Fly archive is available for subscribers to read – subscribe now and access 20 years of the best new writing.

For our last show of season two, we have a twofer! Danielle shares Don Bogen's "A Citizen" and "Immediate Song" with Max. Talking points include lyric sequences, persona poems, an empire's twilight, and phrenology.

Address at the Seamus Heaney Centre by Áras an Uachtaráin

Professor Glenn Patterson, writer and Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre, heads south for the border. He visits Omeath and Newry to find out how those living along the border see the future post-Brexit. PRODUCTION | ChromeRadio in partnership with Queen's University, Belfast | Producer - Catriona Oliphant | Post-production - Chris Sharp.

Sinéad Morrissey is the author of five collections of poetry, the last four of which have been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Award. Her most recent, Parallax, won the coveted prize in 2013. Her work has received numerous accolades including the Patrick Kavanagh Award (of which she was the youngest ever winner), the Michael Hartnett Prize and the Irish Times/Poetry Now Award. In 2007 she took first prize in the National Poetry Competition with ‘Through the Square Window’, a haunting poem that contrasts an image of the dead gathering outside a window with that of a child sleeping peacefully indoors. Morrissey was born in Northern Ireland in 1972 and grew up in Belfast. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, she has travelled widely and lived in Japan and New Zealand before returning to her birthplace in 1999. In 2002 she was appointed Writer in Residence at Queen’s University Belfast, and she is currently Reader in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics. Yeats lived through a period of great change in Ireland from the collapse of the home rule bill through to the Easter Rising of 1916 and the partitioning of the country. In May 1916, 15 men were shot by the British government. They were the leaders of the Easter Rising – a doomed attempt to overthrow British rule in Ireland - and they were commemorated by W.B. Yeats in a poem called Easter 1916. It ends with the following lines: MacDonagh and MacBrideAnd Connolly and PearseNow and in time to be,Wherever green is worn,Are changed, changed utterly:A terrible beauty is born.Yeats lived through decades of turbulence in Ireland. He saw the suspension of home rule, civil war and the division of the country, but how did the politics of the age imprint themselves on his poetry, what was the nature of Yeats' own nationalism, and what did he mean by that most famous of phrases ‘a terrible beauty is born'?With Roy Foster, Carroll Professor of Irish History at Oxford University and Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford; Fran Brearton, Reader in English at Queen's University, Belfast and Assistant Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry; Warwick Gould, Director of the Institute of English Studies in the School of Advanced Study, University of London

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics. Yeats lived through a period of great change in Ireland from the collapse of the home rule bill through to the Easter Rising of 1916 and the partitioning of the country. In May 1916, 15 men were shot by the British government. They were the leaders of the Easter Rising – a doomed attempt to overthrow British rule in Ireland - and they were commemorated by W.B. Yeats in a poem called Easter 1916. It ends with the following lines: MacDonagh and MacBrideAnd Connolly and PearseNow and in time to be,Wherever green is worn,Are changed, changed utterly:A terrible beauty is born.Yeats lived through decades of turbulence in Ireland. He saw the suspension of home rule, civil war and the division of the country, but how did the politics of the age imprint themselves on his poetry, what was the nature of Yeats’ own nationalism, and what did he mean by that most famous of phrases ‘a terrible beauty is born’?With Roy Foster, Carroll Professor of Irish History at Oxford University and Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford; Fran Brearton, Reader in English at Queen’s University, Belfast and Assistant Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry; Warwick Gould, Director of the Institute of English Studies in the School of Advanced Study, University of London

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon. In 1916 the Military Cross was awarded to a captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers for "conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy's trenches". The citation noted that he had braved "rifle and bomb fire" and that "owing to his courage and determination, all the killed and wounded were brought in". The hero in question was the poet, Siegfried Sassoon. And yet a year later, and at great personal risk, Sassoon publicly denounced the conduct of the war in which he had fought so well.Although famous for his bitter, satirical verses and his denunciation of the conduct of the war which landed him in Craiglockhart mental hospital there is much more to this man of contradictions. A mentor to Wilfred Owen, arch enemy of T.S. Eliot and the Modernist movement, his life included a string of homosexual affairs, a failed marriage, a religious conversion and several tumultuous arguments with literary friends. Notably Robert Graves. He was also an obsessive diarist and writer of autobiography and he continued to write poetry until his death, from cancer, in 1967. But how significant a poet is Siegfried Sassoon, what version of Englishness did this half-Jewish, homosexual cricket lover invent for himself and how do you explain the mind of a man who bitterly opposed the First World War, yet fought in it with an almost insane ferocity?With Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Lecturer in English at Birkbeck, University of London and a biographer of Sassoon; Fran Brearton, Reader in English and Assistant Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at the University of Belfast; Max Egremont, a biographer of Siegfried Sassoon

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon. In 1916 the Military Cross was awarded to a captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers for "conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy's trenches". The citation noted that he had braved "rifle and bomb fire" and that "owing to his courage and determination, all the killed and wounded were brought in". The hero in question was the poet, Siegfried Sassoon. And yet a year later, and at great personal risk, Sassoon publicly denounced the conduct of the war in which he had fought so well.Although famous for his bitter, satirical verses and his denunciation of the conduct of the war which landed him in Craiglockhart mental hospital there is much more to this man of contradictions. A mentor to Wilfred Owen, arch enemy of T.S. Eliot and the Modernist movement, his life included a string of homosexual affairs, a failed marriage, a religious conversion and several tumultuous arguments with literary friends. Notably Robert Graves. He was also an obsessive diarist and writer of autobiography and he continued to write poetry until his death, from cancer, in 1967. But how significant a poet is Siegfried Sassoon, what version of Englishness did this half-Jewish, homosexual cricket lover invent for himself and how do you explain the mind of a man who bitterly opposed the First World War, yet fought in it with an almost insane ferocity?With Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Lecturer in English at Birkbeck, University of London and a biographer of Sassoon; Fran Brearton, Reader in English and Assistant Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at the University of Belfast; Max Egremont, a biographer of Siegfried Sassoon