 Book
Digs into Past of Great Poets
Writer-in-Residence Dr Christine
Finn has provided new and unique insights into the lives of two great
poets in her latest book.
'Past Poetic: Archaeology
in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney' considers the way these
two Anglo-Irish poets used archaeology in their work, and how it surfaced
in their lives.
During her research, Christine
traced the path of the poets through archaeological sites, museums, houses,
and boglands, and from Byzantine chapels in Italy to the gilded mosaics
of Stockholm. She even gained experience as a mosaic-maker while on a
scholarship year at Trinity College, Dublin.
She also interviewed Seamus
Heaney the year after he received his Nobel Prize, and spent days looking
through Yeats's library with his daughter, Anne, at her home near Dublin.
The books were donated to the Sligo Instititute of Technology after her
death in 2001.
"I was looking for clues about
his archaeological visits, but I was also very moved. Sitting down with
those books, looking at the pencil markings on the pages, made me feel
immediately closer to Yeats and his wife, Georgie Hyde Lees.
"Past Poetic is a history
book, a biography of two poets, and also a reference book for anyone interested
in poetry. It is also a look at the relationship between archaeology and
poetry."
Christine is an award-winning
journalist and was a Reuter Journalist Research Fellow before studying
archaeology and anthropology at Oxford University as a mature undergraduate
and writing a doctorate on which the book is based.
In 2003 she joined the University
of Bradford as an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeological
Sciences.
She is also the University's
Writer-in-Residence where she is writing the authorised biography of the
archaeologist, Jacquetta Hawkes, JB Priestley's third wife. She is also
the author of Artifacts: an archaeologist's year in Silicon Valley (2001),
and co-editor of Ancient Muses: archaeology and the arts (2003) and Outside
Archaeology: material culture and the poetic imagination (2001).
In 2002 she was elected a
Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
Past Poetic is published by
Duckworth Publishers priced £45.
22 June
2004
 next
top
of page
|
