Between the Contingent and the Transcendent: Heaney’s ‘Poetics’ and their Implications for Teaching Poetry and Creative Writing in the Upper Post-primary School

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn evaluating some of Heaney’s prose writings about the art of poetry – what I have called his ‘Poetics’ – the paper explores how those ideas could enhance the teaching of poetry in the upper post-primary schools. The paper is divided into four closely interconnected sections. The first section evaluates Heaney’s thoughts about the potential centrality of poetry in the English curriculum. In the second section, Heaney’s thoughts about the conflict between ‘poetry’s self-delighting inventiveness’ and ‘the pressures of reality’ are considered, with some complementary attention to a few of Heaney’s own Troubles poems. The third section, in evaluating Heaney’s critiques of some individual poets, registers some of his valuable specific, as well as more general, pedagogical insights. Finally, his prose thoughts about the wellsprings of poetic creativity are examined, together with a brief critique of his poem ‘The Play Way’, which is focused on teaching creative writing in a post-primary classroom.