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Seamus Heaneys Sense of Place | 43
understanding of places appears akin to Derek Mahon’s idea of the “intrinsic
nature” of any location that insists on the particularity of any place in its own
context and for its own essence, on its own right.“
According to Heaney the two ways of knowing a place, the lived and the
learned, have a dynamic relationship, challenging and in turn reinforcing
each other.° While several of his representations of places are rooted in the
first, lived type of knowledge, their inscription into the poems alters the status
of these locations for reception: in the wake of Heaney’s own poetic oeuvre
several of his depicted locations become encrypted into the tradition and thus
promote the second, learned way of approaching place. This suggests that in
his poetic practice the relationship between the two ways is complementary
rather than antipathetic, although in the case of approaching certain locations
such as the bay in “North” there is a tangible sense of the presence of tension
between what is expected and what is eventually experienced. Such instances
also imply the preconditioning potential of initial expectations brought to
the act of observation, which ultimately constrains the speaker’s openness
to receive the experience in his own personal situation and at the same time
indicates the presence and influence of broader cultural contexts in which
that personal situation is always embedded. This at once points to the subtle
relationship between Heaney’s critical perspective reflected in the essay and
his own poetic practice, indicating not only how Heaney’s own writing affects
his reading of others but also the influence his reading has on his own concep¬
tion of approaching place. His poetic practice eventually brings the two ways
of knowing a place together into one complex by fusing the speaker’s often
unconscious and lived experience of the place with the consequent conscious
and learned experience of it for the audience, thus his places are inscribed into
the tradition and reshape it in turn. The result is a dynamic matrix, a constant
resituating of the poles of the lived and of the learned, for him as well as for
the audience, which ultimately keeps Heaney’s sense of place as vibrant and
cherishable as the places themselves.
19 Derek Mahon, The Poems (1961-2020). ed. Peter Fallon. (Loughcrew: Gallery Press, 2021), 128
50 Heaney, Preoccupations, 131