brendan corcoran
the poet’s imagining some equivalent of the labyrinth and bringing himself and the
readerthrough it’.^43 In clarifying his idea of redress, which is fundamental to what
Brearton calls his ‘poetics of responsibility’, Heaney reiterates the notion of poetry
as ‘an adequate response to conditions in the world at a moment’ of crisis.^44 War
becomes exemplary of the totality of the human conditionin extremis.ForHeaney,
like many of his colleagues in Northern Ireland, an adequate poetry is not a balm, but
a salubrious ‘stay’, a strategic pause wherein a feeling or ‘a thought might grow’.^45
Having entered his work, the Troubles offers yet another lens through which
to read Heaney’s poetry. However, such a lens risks limiting the poetry so that
every poem is seen as in some way a ‘Troubles poem’ or a poemaboutIreland.^46
In much the same way that readers have fixated on the Heaney of ‘Digging’ and
‘Personal Helicon’—the poet of boggy, childhood idylls delving into the substrate
of his local world—so readers all too often stop at frequently anthologized poems
like ‘Punishment’ or ‘Exposure’ to register what Ciaran Carson most dreaded as a
consoling rationalization of suffering in Northern Ireland: the suggestion that here
is anœuvreand not just a book (North) reflecting ‘the Good that can come out of
Troubled Times’.^47 IntroducingNorthfor thePoetry Book Society Bulletinin 1975,
Heaney writes: ‘During the last few years there has been considerable expectation
that poets from Northern Ireland should ‘‘say’’ something about ‘‘the situation’’,
but in the end they will only be worth listening to if they are saying something
about and to themselves.’^48
Heaney’s struggle with the question of adequacy leads him to distrust and actively
question not political poetryper sebut the motivations behind its being written. For
example, in ‘Exposure’ fromNorth(1975), he famously writes about ‘weighing and
weighing|My responsibletristia’.^49 Against the backdrop of war, he asks why write
about this: ‘For what? For the ear? For the people?|For what is said behind-backs?’
Later, in ‘The Flight Path’ fromThe Spirit Level(1996), an ardent Irish nationalist
asks: ‘ ‘‘When, for fuck’s sake, are you going to write|Something for us?’’ ‘‘If I do
write something’’ ’, the poet replies, ‘ ‘‘Whatever it is, I’ll be writing for myself.’’ ’^50
Of these lines, Heaney says in a 1999 interview:
(^43) Heaney, ‘Frontiers of Writing’, 191.
(^44) Brearton,Great War in Irish Poetry, 225; Heaney, ‘Frontiers of Writing’, 191.
(^45) Derek Mahon, ‘A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford’, inPoems 1962–1978(Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1979), 79.
(^46) Frank Ormsby attempts to define, in the most general and non-prescriptive terms, ‘Troubles
poetry’. His discussion acknowledges the problematic, identity-dependent notion ‘thatanypoem by a
Northern Irish poet since 1968, on whatever subject, could be termed a troubles poem, in that it may,
consciously or unconsciously,reflect the context in which it was written’ (Ormsby, ‘Preface’, inidem
(ed.),A Rage for Order: Poetry of the Northern Ireland Troubles(Belfast: Blackstaff, 1992), p. xvii).
(^47) Ciaran Carson, ‘ ‘‘Escaped from the Massacre?’’ ’,The Honest Ulsterman, 50 (1975), 186.
(^48) Heaney,inClareBrownandDonPaterson(eds.),Don’t Ask Me What I Mean: Poets in Their
Own Words(London: Picador, 2003), 102.
(^49) Heaney, ‘Exposure’, inOpened Ground, 143. (^50) Heaney, ‘fromThe Flight Path’, ibid. 413.