Merry Dance

This episode is a SEAMUS HEANEY SPECIAL paying tribute to the Nobel Prize-winning poet. Sé Merry Doyle went to the Seamus Heaney Homeplace in Bellaghy, County Derry and recorded rare conversations with friends and admirers of Heaney. Eugene Kielt, recalls the time Seamus came to do a reading of his work at his guest house. The poet Damian Gorman reflects on how Heaney defined his own poetic path. Locals, Maura Johnston and Seamus McErlean speak about how the local landscape shaped Heaney’s worldview. The British Poet Laureate Simon Armitage talked to Sé after his appearance at the Heaney Home Place. This show also features two rare recordings Sé made of Heaney reading his poems “Architect” and “Squaring”.
We would like to thank Faber & Faber for permission to use the recordings of Heaney’s poems, the Seamus Heaney Home Place for their hospitality and Tom Byrne for permission to use his portrait.
Theme music Composed by Benjamin Dwyer 'Etudes' Performed by Smaro Gregoriadou 
Producer and presenter Sé Merry DoyleA Loopline Production 

Welcome to Episode 4 of the Merry Dance Podcast. I talk to the poet and novellist John Hurley about loneliness. John is approaching his 90th birthday and over lunch he told me that loneliness got the better of him this past Christmas and I invited to talk and meditate on how to counter loneliness in our live. Enjoy and share. Sé Merry Doyle

 
Sé Merry Doyle  interviews Philip Stephens, former Political Editor of The FT, about his new book “These Divided Isles - Britain and Ireland, Past and Future”. Philip is a writer and historian, the author most recently of a widely praised account of Britain's post-imperial struggle to find its place in the world: Britain Alone - the Path from Suez to Brexit. He is a Contributing Editor for the Financial Times, where for 25 years  he wrote a regular column about political and international affairs.‍In this quote Philips gives us a glimpse of what the future might look like 'I see the world as on the cusp of the most profound geopolitical upheaval since the end of the Cold War. If history was ever suspended after the fall of the Berlin Wall it has now resumed. I enjoy trying to make sense of this new, fractured and precarious world.  I am a frequent speaker and moderator at international conferences, an Honorary Governor of the Ditchley Foundation, a Richard Von Weizsacker fellow at the Bosch Academy, and a member of the Board of the Franco-British Colloque. I grew up in London but have roots in Co Mayo in the west of Ireland'. style="float: left; margin: 0 15px 15px 0;"

The acclaimed author, Roland Philipps, came into the studio to be a special guest on the monthly Irish radio show “Bright Side Of The Road”, which broadcasts on Portobello Radio. Here Roland talks to the show’s presenter Piers Thompson, and also to the Producer Sé Merry Doyle and Rosalind Scanlon, about his fascinating new biography “Broken Archangel', The Tempestuous Lives of Roger Casement”. This powerful interview shines a light on Roger Casement, who was an Irish patriot, one of the greatest pioneering human rights campaigners of the 20th Century and one of most wronged LGBTQ+ Martyrs of the last century.

After a recent screening of Peter Lennon's 'The Rocky Road to Dublin' at the Kiln Cinema in Kilburn, the restorer of the classic documentary Sé Merry Doyle conducted a Q&A with Eeva Lennon, the late director's wife. Eeeva tells untold stories about the making of the film and how Peter secured the money to make the film from his base in Paris. Peter and his cameraman Raoul Coutard set out on an amazing journey back to Dublin and the resulting film caused a major backlash from the conservative forces in Ireland. Peter's film poses the question, "what do you do with your revolution once you've got it?" It argues that Ireland was dominated by cultural isolationism, Gaelic and clerical traditionalism at the time of its making.