Seamus Heaney, Nobel laureate in literature, poet, translator and essayist, will be a guest of the University Lectures series at Syracuse University on Tuesday, April 13.
Heaney will read from his work and share anecdotes and experiences in “Selected Poems and Preoccupations,” beginning at 7:30 p.m. in Hendricks Chapel. The event is free and open to the public. A sign language interpreter and CART will be available during the lecture, and reduced-rate parking will be available in the Irving Garage. Campus dining centers will offer an Irish dinner on Thursday, April 8, in honor of Heaney’s visit.
The lecture is co-sponsored by the Syracuse University Humanities Center.
The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, Heaney has been called the most important Irish poet since William Butler Yeats. His writing career began at Queen’s University in Belfast, where he published work in the university magazines under the pseudonym Incertus.
Heaney co-founded Field Day Publishing in 1983. He taught and served as a department head at Carysfort College in Dublin and was, at various stages in his career, a visiting professor, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Writer-In-Residence at Harvard University. He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford University from 1989-94.
Heaney’s most recent publications include a translation of “Beowulf” (W.W. Norton & Co., 2000), “Opened Ground” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998), “Electric Light” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001) and “Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), a collection of essays. His newest collection of poetry, “District and Circle” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), was published in 2006. This year, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published “Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney” by Dennis O’Driscoll.
Now in its ninth season, University Lectures is a cross-disciplinary lecture series that brings to the University individuals of exceptional accomplishment. The series is supported by the generosity of the University’s trustees, alumni and friends. The lectures are free and open to the public.
The last lecture in the 2009-10 season will be given by world-renowned photographer and documentarian Annie Leibovitz on April 29.
The Office of University Lectures welcomes suggestions for future speakers. To recommend a speaker, or for additional information about the University Lectures series, contact Esther Gray in the Office of Academic Affairs at 443-2941 or eegray@syr.edu. More information can be found at the University Lectures website, http://lectures.syr.edu.
