Tag: Nobel Prize in Literature

Poetry Club Talks…Seamus Heaney Pt1

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-eqpjx-1157024

Topic: Seamus Heaney
Host: Ron
Poems: “Digging” and “Follower”
Recorded: December 4, 2021

Seamus Heaney Poems

Ron hosts the discussion of one of his favorite poets, Seamus Heaney.  Seamus Justin Heaney, born April 1939 – died August 30, 2013, was an Irish poet, playwright, and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.  We look at the created word pictures and word choice, share about the life and awards of this famous poet.  In part one we begin an exploration of poems that seem to bookend each other.  Will we get to the “root” of their meaning?  Perhaps, or perhaps we’ll save it for part 2. Please join us.

Seamus Heaney in 1971 Photo credit Jack McManus

“Seamus Heaney is widely recognized as one of the major poets of the 20th century. A native of Northern Ireland, Heaney was raised in County Derry, and later lived for many years in Dublin. He was the author of over 20 volumes of poetry and criticism and edited several widely used anthologies. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 “for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.” Heaney taught at Harvard University (1985-2006) and served as the Oxford Professor of Poetry (1989-1994). He died in 2013.”

Please visit https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/seamus-heaney

Poetry Club Talks is produced by Chickadee Productions

Poetry Club Talks…Wislawa Szymborska

Topic: Wislawa Szymborska
Host: Linda
Poems: On Death, without Exaggeration, Stage Fright, In Broad Daylight
Recorded: May 1, 2021

Poems by Wislawa Szymborska

Poetry Club Talks…Szymborska. The famous female Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012). If you haven’t heard of her or read her poetry, give yourself a treat. This show is an introduction to the person and her poems. Linda shares three of Szymborska’s poems published in “Polish Poetry of the Last Two Decades of Communist Rule: Spoiling Cannibals’ Fun”*

This 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature recipient takes her readers on a unique journey of word-scapes and concepts.

In awarding the prize, the Academy praised her “poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.” Listen to The Club as we tour through her poetry and prose.

This program was produced by Chickadee Productions

*Poems by Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012)
Source: Spoiling Cannibal’s’ Fun: Polish Poetry of the Last Two Decades of Communist Rule. Evanston, ILL: Northwestern University Press, 1993

Poetry Club Talks…Louise Gluck Pt1

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-4gjpa-f354f8

Topic: Louise Gluck
Host: Linda and Amory
Poems: “New World” and “Matins”
Recorded: November 21, 2020

Our first two-parter!
When Louise Gluck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2020, the NYT recognized that many were unfamiliar with her work. One of their writers posted five poems, from five different collections, to introduce her. Linda shares a brief Gluck bio and Amory introduces two poems.
In Part 2 Poetry Club discusses Gluck’s poem “Parable of the Hostages”

 

Event: 2014 West Coast Tagore Festival

You’re invited to the

West Coast Tagore Festival

September 5th and 6th 2014

Richmond, British Columbia

tagore 2014
September 5th and 6th

 

Carla Shafer, friend and host to Bellingham’s Chuckanut Sandstone Writers Theater, and I have been invited to read poems at this event.

Last year I was moved by the presentation of Rabindranath Tagore’s life, (b. 7 May 1861 – d. 7 August 1941).   The festival is a colorful gathering of true Tagore followers.  A real treasure for the NW.

“…sobriquet Gurudev,δ[›]was a Bengali polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of Gitanjali and its “profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse”,[3] he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.[4] In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his “elegant prose and magical poetry” remain largely unknown outside Bengal.”

THE GIFT
A poem by Rabindranath Tagore

I want to give you something, my child, for we are drifting in the
stream of the world.
Our lives will be carried apart, and our love forgotten.
But I am not so foolish as to hope that I could buy your heart
with my gifts.
Young is your life, your path long, and you drink the love we
bring you at one draught and turn and run away from us.
You have your play and your playmates. What harm is there if
you have no time or thought for us!
We, indeed, have leisure enough in old age to count the days
that are past, to cherish in our hearts what our hands have lost
for ever.
The river runs swift with a song, breaking through all
barriers. But the mountain stays and remembers, and follows her
with his love.

 

***

*source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore