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  • About
    • The Centre
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    • The Heaney Community
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    • Collections at the Seamus Heaney Centre
  • Our People
    • The SHC Fellows
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    • Fulbright Scholars
    • Children's Writing Fellow
    • Visiting International Poetry Fellows
    • Ireland Chair of Poetry
  • Study
    • The Poetry Summer School
    • Student Showcases and Opportunities
    • Writing Groups
    • New Students...
    • SHC X Fighting Words
    • Hear from Alumni
  • First Collection Poetry Prize
    • Poetry Prize 2025
    • Poetry Prize 2024
    • Poetry Prize 2023
    • Poetry Prize 2022
    • Poetry Prize 2021
    • Poetry Prize 2020
  • Resources
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    • Criticism & Ideas on Writing
    • Films & Virtual Events
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  • Summer School 2020
  • Rebecca Farmer

Rebecca Farmer

Where are we? 
Battersea Park. Timing is everything and my timing is not good. Just before the lockdown began my decorator neighbour started redecorating my flat in Streatham. I moved out to escape the smell of paint. I moved in with a friend who lives on the other side of the river (the smell was very strong!). I was once told that if you catch a mouse in a ‘humane’ mouse trap you need to release it on the other side of a river if you don’t want it making its way back. I am a mouse who doesn’t seem to have found its way back – yet. 

What are you working on? 
Poems about ghosts and an article about Louis MacNeice in London. The ghosts come with me to Battersea Park and that’s where I write about them. MacNeice gets read and written about in my friend’s office. Sometimes the ghosts and MacNeice and London get all mixed up. When I am not looking up at the light through the trees or writing the odd word in the park my favourite thing to do is to watch other people’s dogs. I used to have a border collie and I dream about getting another dog. A collie would be unsuitable for a small London flat but a dachshund? Sometimes the ghosts travel back to the office – ‘lifting a receiver warm from the ear of a ghost…’ 

What’s that over there? 
A dachshund – MacNeice described them as running like centipedes – I am studying this one to see if they really do. They are funny. 

What’s that sound? 
A siren. My friend’s place overlooks Chelsea Bridge. Throughout April we watched as ambulances rushed across the bridge to St Thomas’ Hospital. The experience seems to have left me with a heightened awareness of the noise. The London traffic has now returned but I still hear the sirens all the time. Even in the park I can’t escape and now I wonder if there are more of them or I just notice them more. 

Time for a break…?
Last year I had an operation on my spine, recovery has been achingly slow. I am trying to get stronger. I do stretches every morning and short bike rides in the park. If I enter the park at the Chelsea Gate there is a long drag that’s downhill and it lets me feel I can fly or at least still ride fast. When I try to cycle back up I am reminded that I can’t. This weekend my youngest daughter intends to squeeze me into one of her wet suits and take me wild swimming… 

Was there a particularly enlightening moment during the Summer School? 
You know how it’s always said that it’s the people who make a place? Well, by the end of the week I realised that’s true. I hadn’t been to the place but I had met the people. I was very apprehensive about what virtual would be like. It was exhausting but it was also a lot of fun and very serious. By the end of the week I felt I’d been away. Not being in a place I wanted to be has made me think a lot more about a sense of place in my writing.

On the last night I asked Glenn Patterson to describe what the Centre was physically like. He did it so vividly that I feel sure I could now find my way around the place. He also talked about Belfast and I’m really keen to visit as soon as I can. Meanwhile I’ve had to adjust to being back from not having been away. 

Now that the Summer School is over, what's next for your writing? 
I came away with lots of ideas of what I wanted to read next. I enjoyed the lectures about poetry at the Summer School and I’ve been reading ‘The Art of Voice’ by Tony Hoagland and ‘The Heart of a Stranger’, an anthology of exile literature edited by André Naffis-Sahely and Anne Carson’s ‘Men in the Off Hours’. During the Summer School I had a very enjoyable and inspiring one-to-one with Susannah Dickey so I’m really looking forward to reading her novel ‘Tennis Lessons’. 

Time has also been spent collecting and ordering the ghosts for a pamphlet. I’m not quite ready for an exorcism but maybe I should start to think about it. 

Summer School 2020
  • Summer School 2020
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