27 - 30 June 2024

Gilded Gravel in the Bowl

Irish Cuisine and Culinary Heritage in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney

Venue: BOOK MARKet café

Seamus Heaney’s poetry is rich in detail about agricultural and food practices in his native Northern Ireland from the 1950s onwards, such as cattle-trading, butter-churning, eel-fishing, blackberry-picking or home-baking. Heaney’s poetic renderings of agricultural and culinary scenes are detailed and multi-layered, fuelled by his deep familiarity with rural and culinary activities as well as his knowledge of Irish mythology, history and culture. This talk will trace the abundance of agricultural and culinary scenes in Heaney’s work and show how the foodstuffs and culinary techniques featured in the poetry reflect historic and contemporary Irish cuisine and culture as explained by food-historical and folkloristic research, giving his work a particularly Irish cultural signature. It will be presented by Anke Klitzing, lecturer on food and culture, literature and media at the Technological University Dublin, where she is currently undertaking PhD research into food in Irish literature.

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Gilded Gravel in the Bowl