Dennis O Driscoll Views

Books

Dennis Ol’Driscoll has published eight books of poetry, the most recent of which is Reality Check (Copper Canyon Press, 2008). His other publications include a selection of his essays and reviews; a volume of quotations about poetry, Quote Poet Unquote (Copper Canyon Press, 2008); and Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney (Farrar Straus r Giroux, 2008).

Dennis O'Driscoll: Years ago, I wrote that Heaney's lack of self-importance makes those he meets feel important, and there can scarcely be a reader left in Ireland who does not claim (based on a single encounter) to know him, or even to know him well (a status earned by a second meeting). Although Seamus Heaney and I have known each other for a long time -- I attended the launch of his third collection, Wintering Out (1972), when I was eighteen; I interviewed him for a Dublin weekly journal at the time of his fortieth birthday in 1979 -- I keep my distance in Stepping Stones. The book is about him, not about 'us', and, so, I am as invisible, as impersonal, as unobtrusive as possible in its pages.

Dennis O'Driscoll: I have a strong archival impulse -- as was demonstrated by my two voluminous collections of contemporary quotations about poetry: The Bloodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations and its American counterpart Quote Poet Unquote. Those books -- in which Seamus Heaney is well represented -- snatch from oblivion a plethora of definitions, ruminations and witticisms that would otherwise vanish on the airwaves or moulder in obscure little literary magazines. A similar motivation operated for Stepping Stones. Is there a more wise, profound and eloquent interviewee in poetry than Seamus Heaney? I wanted to capture his ideas at much greater length than other interviews had; to rescue reflections or recollections that would be absent from the record otherwise. My hope was that the book would present a three-dimensional portrait of the artist, a biography in all but name; by doing so in his own words, it would amount to a Heaney autobiography also.

Dennis O'Driscoll: Was and am. But I would opt for 'awe-struck' rather than 'star-struck' because his fame was most certainly not the spur that impelled me to retrace the trajectory of his life. I was every bit as much in awe of his genius when I interviewed him in his seventieth year as I was when I interviewed him as he was about to turn forty and publish Field Work. More so, actually -- because, by the time of Stepping Stones, there was a much greater bibliography to marvel at.