Series: Poetry Breaks
Program: Poetry Breaks I, Seamus Heaney
Episode: 335
Date: 1988-01-01
Subject: Oral interpretation of poetry; Readings
Copyright Holder: Leita Hagemann Luchetti and WGBH Educational Foundation

Clip Description
Seamus Heaney, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in 1939 in County Derry, Northern Ireland. He is a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and held the chair of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University from 1989 to 1994. Heaney's past works include eleven books of poetry, three books of criticism, and his version of Sophocles' Philoctetes, The Cure at Troy. His books of poetry include Death of a Naturalist, North Station Island, and ,i>The Haw Lantern. His poems have appeared in ,i>The New Yorker, The New Republic, Ploughshares, The New York Review of Books, and Antaeus. A resident of Dublin, Heaney spends part of each year teaching at Harvard University, where he is Ralph Waldo Emerson Poet in Residence.

Seamus Heaney introduces and reads his poems at a Harvard University library. The following poems were edited for broadcast and general distribution, and appear on the master tape with and without "Poetry Breaks" logo and copyright:

"Sonnet III"
"Blackberry-Picking"
"Midterm Break"
"Wedding Day"
"Sonnet V"
"The Railway Children"
"A Kite for Michael and Christopher"
"Song"

Produced and directed by Leita Hagemann Luchetti.

"Poetry Breaks," conceived by Leita Hagemann Luchetti and co-produced by Luchetti and WGBH New Television Workshop, is an ongoing series of over 100 thirty-second to four-minute spots presenting internationally known poets reading their work on location. These have aired individually on WGBH and public television stations across the country. The Workshop collaborated with Luchetti until its closing in 1993, at which point the works became co-productions of Luchetti and the larger WGBH Foundation.

"Poetry Breaks II," produced from 1991-1994, began airing on WGBH-TV in 1994, and was also broadcast by dozens of other public television stations throughout the country starting in 1994. Between 1995 and 1997, three new poets were taped for Poetry Breaks III.

Program Description
Seamus Heaney, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in 1939 in County Derry, Northern Ireland. He is a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and held the chair of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University from 1989 to 1994. Heaney's past works include eleven books of poetry, three books of criticism, and his version of Sophocles' Philoctetes, The Cure at Troy. His books of poetry include Death of a Naturalist, North Station Island, and ,i>The Haw Lantern. His poems have appeared in ,i>The New Yorker, The New Republic, Ploughshares, The New York Review of Books, and Antaeus. A resident of Dublin, Heaney spends part of each year teaching at Harvard University, where he is Ralph Waldo Emerson Poet in Residence.

Seamus Heaney introduces and reads his poems at a Harvard University library. The following poems were edited for broadcast and general distribution, and appear on the master tape with and without "Poetry Breaks" logo and copyright:

"Sonnet III"
"Blackberry-Picking"
"Midterm Break"
"Wedding Day"
"Sonnet V"
"The Railway Children"
"A Kite for Michael and Christopher"
"Song"

Produced and directed by Leita Hagemann Luchetti.

"Poetry Breaks," conceived by Leita Hagemann Luchetti and co-produced by Luchetti and WGBH New Television Workshop, is an ongoing series of over 100 thirty-second to four-minute spots presenting internationally known poets reading their work on location. These have aired individually on WGBH and public television stations across the country. The Workshop collaborated with Luchetti until its closing in 1993, at which point the works became co-productions of Luchetti and the larger WGBH Foundation.

"Poetry Breaks II," produced from 1991-1994, began airing on WGBH-TV in 1994, and was also broadcast by dozens of other public television stations throughout the country starting in 1994. Between 1995 and 1997, three new poets were taped for Poetry Breaks III.

Series Description
The New Television Workshop originated at WGBH, a public broadcasting station in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1974 to support the creation and development of experimental video art. This experimental programming included dance, drama, music, performance and visual arts on video and film. As early as 1968, WGBH was committed to the development of video art through residency programs, with artists such as Nam June Paik, and the "Rockefeller Artists-in-Television" project. Many of these early works (pre-1974) were broadcast both locally and nationally.

As an umbrella for arts related programming, the Workshop included "Artist's Showcase, " "Frames of Reference, " "Dance for Camera, " "Poetry Breaks," and "New Television," as well as acquired arts programming. Individual works were created for "Visions," a series produced by WNET (New York), and "Alive From Off Center," a series produced by KTCA (St. Paul - Minneapolis). The Contemporary Art Television (CAT) Fund was co-founded by the Workshop and Boston's Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) in the 1980's, to commission works by video artists. In 1993 the Workshop ceased production at WGBH.

See also: http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/NTW/FA/TITLES/Poetry81.HTML