1982 and Van Morrison is onstage in Belfast, chasing his rapture across \u2018Summertime In England\u2019. A roll call of the poets, the mystics, the romantics and the lightning catchers. More than eight minutes, and not a bit of it surplus. He\u2019s calling out to Coleridge and Wordsworth, Blake, Whitman and Beckett. On saxophone there\u2019s Pee Wee Ellis, sometime James Brown associate and he\u2019s matching the singer\u2019s fever, blowing with abandon. As is his wont, Van revises his\u00a0 lyrics from the recorded version, sending more names into the ether.<\/p>\n
\u201cMister Heaney, <\/em> And then he\u2019s off again, citing RS Thomas and DH Lawrence as the song makes a squalling case for feeling and sensation: it ain\u2019t why, it just is.<\/p>\n You might have supposed that Van and Seamus Heaney were connected. The most prolific writers on the island. The pair of them deep into their sense of place, their local resonances, the names and the townlands, the squelch and the smell of it. Like Kavanagh before them they could find the epic in the commonplace, the small-town Homers. While the poet would find amazement in a water diviner, Van channeled his magic through the transistor radio and the wavelength.<\/p>\n Yet there\u2019s little evidence of Morrison and Heaney sharing much. In 2006, Van spoke to Paul Sexton at The Independent.<\/p>\n “There’s poets who do that, and there’s the other kind of poetry they call the romantics, which comes from a different place of being in touch with nature, so that’s kind of where I’m coming from. If there’s any sort of lineage in this, it’s people like that. Or in Ireland – Patrick Kavanagh, or Joseph Campbell, these kind of lyricists.<\/p>\n “It’s more like an instinctual thing; that’s where the song’s from, rather than sitting down and thinking more intellectually, like Seamus Heaney. He’s a very intellectual poet. I’m coming from the other place.”<\/p>\n So no apparent affinity, then. If you\u2019re looking for Irish musicians relating to Heaney, you might be better looking to Neil Hannon, who responded wryly with \u2018Death Of A Supernaturalist\u2019. Or Gary Lightbody, whose Myspace signature once used the closing lines of \u2018Digging\u2019.<\/p>\n
\n\u2028I read your book,\u2028<\/em>
\nPreoccupations,\u2028<\/em>
\nAmong the regions\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n