Reflection On Heaney’s Station Island At Down Arts Centre

The Lyric Theatre is delighted to present, in partnership with the St Patrick’s Festival, a dramatic reading of Seamus Heaney’s Station Island at the:

 Down Arts Centre 

on 18 March, 8pm

(£10/£8 conc).

Book on 028 4461 0747 or in person at Down Arts Centre.

 had come to the edge of the water,
soothed by just looking, idling over it
as if it were a clear barometer or a mirror, when his reflection
did not appear but I sensed a presence
entering into my concentration…
(Seamus Heaney).

                                                                                

Don’t miss Station Island at the Down Arts Centre.

 

Published in 1984, Station Island represents a literary pilgrimage for Heaney, as he explores his complex relationship to his homeland, his faith and the past.

The title poem, ‘Station Island’ – steeped as it is in ritual, memory, and ghostly visions – is central to the poet’s autobiographical quest for personal and artistic integrity.

Set on Lough Derg, a place that has been a site of pilgrimage for over a thousand years, this key collection of twelve poems represents the twelve ‘stations’ pilgrims go through to obtain a sense of healing, renewal and peace. In the same way, Heaney imagines his ‘Station Island’ as a symbolic literary retreat to conduct a very personal ‘examination of conscience’.

Directed by the Lyric’s Executive Producer Jimmy Fay, this dynamic performance melds the spoken word, film, and sound to evoke the poet’s process of self-examination.

 Against the backdrop of visual vignettes filmed by Neil O’Driscoll at Lough Derg, performers Paul Stapleton and Steve Davis will provide a unique improvised musical interpretation of the text as Seamus O’Hara delivers a dramatic reading of the poems.