SEAMUS HEANEY MEMORIAL READING featuring AIDAN ROONEY, VALERIE DUFF and DENNIS DALY --Aug 30 7PM

A Young Seamus Heaney

SEAMUS HEANEY MEMORIAL READING TO TAKE PLACE AT CHRIST CHURCH,

0 GARDEN STREET (just one block down the street from First Church, our usual location)

on August 30th, 2017, featuring AIDAN ROONEY, VALERIE DUFF and DENNIS DALY.

The reading starts at 7pm.

By Michael Steffen

Due to summer construction delays at First Church Cambridge, 11 Garden Street, which has been the set location of the Hastings Series poetry readings since we started in the spring of 2014, our summer gathering, the Seamus Heaney Memorial Reading, will take place at Christ Church just a block east on Garden Street, a large gray Episcopal church next to the Burying Ground enclosure.

Our guest readers this year will be Aidan Rooney, Valerie Duff and Dennis Daly, each with impressive publishing bio’s and well-known in the area. Along with a short tribute to Robert Lowell in honor of his centenary, including reflections on Heaney’s friendship with and writings on the celebrated Boston poet, our readers will be sharing their poems with memories and inspirations of the Irish Nobel laureate.

This will be our Fourth Seamus Heaney tribute. Other guest readers for the special event have included Daniel Tobin, Fred Marchant, Joan Houlihan, Doug Holder, Tomas O’Leary, Greg Delanty, Meg Tyler, George Kalogeris and David Blair.

This reading in particular has been very well attended. It’s given authors the opportunity to share insights in the way of inspirations Heaney has had on their lives and poems. A few of our readers have given remarkable talks on aspects of Heaney’s poetry.

Seamus is among the sequoias of poets in English “in our lifetime.”

On behalf of the Hastings Room Reading Series, I mention our gratitude to First Church Congregationalist of Cambridge and Christ Church Episcopal, our co-founder Steven Brown, promotional designer and poet Kevin Cutrer, our series advisor Dan Wuenschel, with special thanks to Elizabeth Doran and Ifeanyi Menkiti and the Grolier Book Store for their friendship and support.

See you on the 30th !