This week Niall chooses pieces by Hector Berlioz.
At 12.30 an episode from a new series of short radio features ‘Remembering Seamus Heaney’. RTÉ lyric fm marks Seamus Heaney’s tenth anniversary by asking ten people to each choose and introduce a favourite Heaney poem followed by a recording of the poet himself reading the poem. The poems chosen include some of his best known and most loved, like Mid-Term Break and Digging, as well as less well known poems, and range in theme from family and childhood, music and landscape, history, human rights, and the Troubles.
All the poems in the series are included in 100 Poems of Seamus Heaney, published by Faber and Faber and the recordings are taken from the Collected Poems CD box set produced by RTÉ in association with The Lannan Foundation. Our thanks to the publishers and to the Estate of Seamus Heaney for permission to broadcast these poems.
A Rockfinch production for RTÉ lyric fm co-funded by RTÉ IRP and Coimisiún na Meán.
Monday, 11th September: Episode 6: Journalist, activist and artist Orla Tinsley chooses a poem that many people will remember well from school and that has a personal significance for her: Mid-Term Break (from Death of a Naturalist, published by Faber & Faber).
Tuesday, 12th September: Episode 7: Poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin, who grew up in the boglands of the Donegal Gaeltacht, talks about how Heaney’s work inspired her to take more risks with her own poetry and introduces one of his bog poems: Punishment (from North, Faber & Faber).
Wednesday, 13th September: Episode 8: Former Wexford hurler Diarmuid Lyng chooses a poem by Heaney that was inspired by hearing the traditional air ‘Port na bPúcaí’ or the Tune of the Fairies: The Given Note (from Door into the Dark, Faber & Faber).
Thursday, 14th September: Episode 9: Syrian-Irish journalist and activist Razan Ibraheem, who is a member of the board of Amnesty International Ireland, introduces a poem written by Seamus Heaney for Amnesty International: From the Republic of Conscience (from The Haw Lantern, Faber & Faber).
Friday, 15th September: Episode 10: Artist Colin Davidson, who painted a portrait of Seamus Heaney not long before he died, chooses a poem that illustrates parallels between painting and poetry: Postscript (from The Spirit Level, Faber and Faber).
RTÉ lyric fm, Monday 11th September – Friday 15th September, 10am-1pm
