British Women Writers Conference 2007 held at UK

The theme for this year's conference was "Speaking with Authority," which discussed various forms of power that women writers wield in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The conference featured interdisciplinary approaches to the writers of this period, including the ways women writers gain, accept, resist, and complicate authority and power.  Keynote speakers were Deborah Epstein Nord, Sally Mitchell, Teresa Mangum, Ann Ardis, and Laura Rosenthal.

Information about the conference are available at the conference website.

Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney Awarded Honorary Degree

Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney was the Commencement Speaker at the 139th Commencement Ceremony at the University of Kentucky and was awarded an Honorary Degree at the spring graduation ceremony in Rupp Arena on Sunday, 7 May 2006. In an inspiring address, drawing on the poetry of William Wordsworth, Heaney spoke on the theme of having the courage to do what is right, citing the examples of Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks and Vaclav Havel. The poet has presented the annotated typescript of this address to UK Special Collections.

Born and raised in Northern Ireland, though resident for many years in the Republic of Ireland, Seamus Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past" (in the words of the Nobel Prize Literature Committee). The recipient of over thirty honorary degrees, Heaney was formerly the Boylston Chair of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University and is currently the Ralph Waldo Emerson Poet in Residence at Harvard -- a position held previously by Robert Lowell and before him by Robert Frost. It was Lowell who dubbed Heaney "the best Irish poet since W.B.Yeats."

Heaney’s twelfth collection of poems, District and Circle was published in the USA in early May by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, having previously been published in the UK and Ireland by Faber & Faber, where it has been widely acclaimed. Also published this month is a 40th anniversary edition of his first book of poems, Death of a Naturalist, which has never gone out of print -- highly unusual for a first book of poems by a contemporary author.

On Friday 5 May, Heaney met with graduate students and faculty in a small seminar and later in the afternoon he gave a poetry reading to a capacity audience at the Great Hall, Special Collections, Margaret I. King Library (pictured above). He also launched an exhibition of books and manuscripts by Irish authors W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and himself, titled "Four Nobel Laureates." The event was sponsored by the Department of English, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School and the College of Libraries. The exhibition materials, which were drawn from the Hugh Peal Collection and a private collection, will be on show at King Library until 30 June 2006. The exhibit includes three, limited-edition broadsides by Seamus Heaney published during recent years by UK’s King Library Press: "The Lift," "The Blackbird of Glanmore," and "Early Irish: Five Translations." The last of these was printed in an edition of 75 copies to celebrate the poet’s receiving an Honorary Degree at the University of Kentucky.

Heaney began the reading with his best-known poem, "Digging," which he recited by heart, and several other early poems, including "Thatcher" and "Mid-Term Break." He also read "Exposure" and "District and Circle" and ended with "The Lift" and "The Blackbird of Glanmore," both collected in his new volume. President Lee Todd who was present at the reading led the standing ovation.

This was Seamus Heaney’s first visit to Lexington, although he had previously received an honorary doctorate from Bellarmine College, Louisville. After his appearance at the University of Kentucky, Heaney went on a coast-to-coast reading tour, including venues at the Free Library of Philadelphia; the 92nd Street Y, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, Dallas and the Herbst Theatre, San Francisco. He also gave the University Commencement address at Claremont McKenna College, California, on Saturday 13 May.

• Poet Seamus Heaney to speak at UK
• Heaney gets good reviews at UK
• 'We are all here for good,' poet tells grads