It has been a strange, uneasy summer - to put it mildly - but we’ve been lucky to have some good news to share at the end of it.
Freshly printed broadsides at Stoney Road Press
On Seamus Heaney by Roy Foster
Our Seamus Heaney Broadsides project with Stoney Road Press (click here to find out more) has had an astonishing response, thanks to wonderful coverage in the Irish Times and on RTE Nationwide. We’ll be using the profits from the project to fund future philanthropic projects, currently in development. (More on those in the coming months.)
August also saw the launch of Roy Foster’s marvellous On Seamus Heaney, published by Princeton University Press as part of their Writers on Writers series (click here to order a copy). A compact study of SH’s life and work, it is as illuminating, perceptive and moving as you’d expect from one of the great historians and literary biographers of his day. Read the excellent reviews of it, in the Irish Independent and the Dublin Review of Books.
There was also a surge of interest (and pride) when former US Vice President Joe Biden closed his powerful speech at the Democratic National Convention on 20 August – accepting the nomination as Democratic candidate for President – with lines from The Cure at Troy:
‘History says
Don’t hope on this side of the grave
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.’
He added “This is our moment to make hope and history rhyme.” A long-time fan of Irish poetry and SH in particular, Biden’s choice of quote in this crucial speech prompted pieces in The Washington Post, The Observer and The New York Times.
Strange days as we prepare to winter another one out, but hoping for better ones ahead.
