In Conversation: Jane Hirshfield & Nick Laird
The Seamus Heaney Centre’s Visiting International Poetry Fellow for 2022-23, Jane Hirshfield is one of American poetry’s central spokespersons for concerns of the biosphere. She is described as writing “some of the most important poetry in the world today,” according to The New York Times and as “among the modern masters” by The Washington Post.
She was in residence at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s throughout November 2022, working with postgraduate students and continuing her own writing. Early in this residency, Jane sat down with Professor Nick Laird in the Great Hall at Queen’s to discuss her work and share some poems.
A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the founder of Poets For Science, Jane Hirshfield is the author of nine collections of poetry, including most recently Ledger (Knopf/Bloodaxe, 2020), and her work has been translated into over fifteen languages. In 2019, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.