49 - Hughes and Heaney

Summary

Hughes and Heaney in one chapter? Various arguments to do with nationality or poetic fashion might lead one to expect, let us say, Ted Hughes and Thom Gunn, or Seamus Heaney and Patrick Kavanagh. Indeed, the former coupling was promoted by Faber, who published both Gunn and Hughes in a well-known and much-used joint selection. In retrospect, as we shall see, the combination seems less plausible than it once did. But interpretations which assume the dominance of a cultural and national framework are destined to inaccuracy and limitation. The structure of publishing arrangements and the reading habits of poets in Britain and Ireland from the 1960s to now are such that one simply cannot take the first steps in accounting for poetic relationships and influence without looking at the two countries together. And while there is now some evidence that Ireland as a whole is looking more and more to America, the period with which we are concerned in this chapter was characterised by the substantial overlap of matters poetic in Ireland and Britain – including in the question of what American poets to read. Hughes was an acknowledged influence on Heaney, and became a good friend. Heaney, like Hughes, was published by what was then unquestionably Britain’s premier poetry publisher, Faber. Together, they edited one of the most popular and influential poetry anthologies of the late twentieth century, The Rattle Bag (Faber, 1982). Hughes was always interested in Celtic mythology and folklore, and most of all in Ireland and Irish literature. Both poets understood and drew inspiration from the traditional life of country people, and from the way nature was encountered by them.