It was very busy in town on Saturday morning and I pulled up a chair and got my double expresso Italian style to drink and stared vacantly into space when a rather tall gentlman reached over my head and grabbed the newspapers from the papertray attached to the wall just above my head. I decided I would do the same and picked up a copy of Saturday's Times and there was nothing of it left ... since the tall gentleman had got there before me .. but I was fortunate to find a Section title/Body and Soul and I read my way rapidly through this section amidst the busy energy of the Italian Coffee Bar Costa/Southampton. I came up an article on the Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney ... Poet .. and it was full of news on the poet (Ireland)as he is now about 70 I gather and is still writing ...Heaney has been busy at last keeping up to date ... one thing I did discover was that Paul Muldoon Poet was Heaney's student ... so Heaney is or was a teacher ... and Heaney is a best selling writer .. along with all the others in the hall of writers fame house!
The writer of the article on Seamus Heaney makes the point that Seamus Heaney has been reading his poems recently with his Ulster Accent which is described in glowing terms by the writer. Accent as we know plays a major role in The Times article .. but then so does reading The Times. In fact, I was so surprised upon returnng to the UK (from Istanbul/Prague)to rediscover the obsession English writers have with /accent/that it was odd to be back hammering away at how they talk to each other. Mind you I was told that the favourite accent of all in English is/was "Oxford" .. the Oxford Accent was all that it was dreamed up to be. Myself, I am accentless and I throw away accents when I have finished with them in the Theatre or Seminar Room or Classroom .. I dump the accent and get a new and brighter accent as the muse takes me onward and forward in time. Great news in The Times.. keep on working.....
More abstracts about the The Times