Remembering Séamus Heaney at UC Berkeley

Tribute to Séamus Heaney at UC Berkeley. Featured readers were UC professors (Heaney taught at Berkekey) Robert Hass, Robert Tracy, Peter Dale Scott, Morton Paley, Geoffrey O'Brien, C.S Giscombe, Catherine Flynn, Eric Falci, James G Turner, plus many from the community including Vice Consul Kevin Byrne, Neil O'Neill, Leslie Cody, Shay Black, and myself.

Someone read Digging, another read Oysters (two of my favorites—nearly committed to memory. The Burren is another.) Several read selections from Station Island: IV was brutal, Dantesque, about The Troubles. Neil read Sloe Gin.

We told Seamus stories, the poet's job was to explore the marginalia of life, and since I'd studied medieval Irish mss at UC, I read The Glosses. Three poems of kites, it became a theme. Someone read from Heaney's Beowulf, then Dante, another read pithy literary criticism notes.

And stories, yes, the stories. There's no such thing as a short whiskey or a short poetry reading. Bob Hass recounted what Heaney told him: "Sex is in its infancy in Ireland." Our homework was to read Heaney's Irish erotic poem, The Skunk, of course.
 
Among the storytellers were my favorite seanchaí professor and Joyce scholar, first translator of Osip Mandelstam, Bob Tracy who testified at Lenny Bruce's obscenity trial. I think he testified at Joyce's too.

Fellow Marin poet and longtime friend, Bob Hass read from The Apple Trees of Olema—my home stomping ground. At an Occupy Cal demonstration at UC Berkeley, Hass was hit in the ribs by a police officer with a baton. His wife Brenda Hillman was shoved to the ground. There's a YouTube video of it. Bob got back. He wrote about it in a New York Times opinion piece, "Poet-Bashing Police." 11//19/2011.

Both Bob Hass and Geoffrey O'Brien took part in Occupy Cal. O'Brien spoke out to a police officer who was hitting a Berkeley student because he would not break his link in a human chain. The police officer then hit O'Brien in the ribs, a reaction he would later call "brutal."  

So many new faces (at least to me). Lovely man, Peter Dale Scott. Some may know his Coming to Jakarta: A Poem About Terror.  And Eric Falci, C.S Giscombe whose work has appeared in Callaloo, Another Chicago Magazine, Hambone, New American Writing, o.blek, Obsidian, River Styx, Situation and Samizdat.  

Irish VIce Consul, Kevin Byrne

Our new Irish Vice Consul, Kevin Byrne, a Dublin man. His first event in America? A Séamus Heaney tribute. Seamus Heaney would've enjoyed it.
 
The Maude Fife Room temperature was 110°—due to an electrical eruption this AM at UC Berkeley, nobody could figure out how to turn off the heat. It was a real Dante's Inferno—so we held the memorial tribute to Seamus Heaney in the hallway at Wheeler Hall, UC Berkeley—t'was like a longship cathedral of poetry. Perhaps it was the feast Hall, Herorot. Beowulf was invoked in both languages. Dante too. It was a real poetry roast. Heaney would've like that.

It was so hot even in the hall, we shed what clothes we could, my silk scarf became an impromptu podium cloth. By the time the reading began, there were chairs all the way to the far end of the hall.

At first they thought the electrical explosion was a bomb. Huge fireball. Someone stole copper wire from an underground utility station. The entire campus was w/o electricity for most of the day. Instead of cancelling classes, students took out their smartphones as a source of light, and carried on.

So the least we could do, was to carry on ourselves. Even with every window and door on the 3rd floor open, cross ventilation, the room was like an oven—a bit like standing in front of the glory hole of a big glass kiln.

An amazing turnout. Even if we were all nearly broiled in the process. It was hot as a crematorium. A smithy's forge. The Goibniu, Himself was in attendance. 

 Afterwards, we ate and drank and told stories—we spread a little joy. Bob Hass sad to take the leftover food from the reception, and as we walked down Telegraph, so many homeless. So we gave a shoutout to Occupy Telegraph with a poet's funeral feast. And so we fed about 20 folks on the street. Poco a poco, that's how it's done. There's a poem embedded in this somewhere.

Ta to Bob Hass & Christopher Miller for an abfab event.

Fitting that my 10,000th tweet was in tribute to Seamus Heaney: for 10,000 birds have taken flight across the dark shoulder of the night.

Noli timere!  a Shéamus! Rest in peace.


Photos: Seamus Heaney Tribute, UC Berkeley 2013
Seamus Heaney—The Berkeley Days—Memorial Reading, Irish Historical Society, Mechanic's Institute, SF