Heaney’s Hauntings: Archaeology, Poetry and the ‘Gendered Bog’

Poetry as a Tool For Outreach in Quaternary Science: Examples From the 20th INQUA Congress

“…Composing and/or performing a poem, through the use of imagery, simile and metaphor, can offer alternative ways of inspiring interest in scientific ideas and of communicating them to new audiences, possibly helping, in scientist and poet Sam Illingworth's opinion, to 'enhance the long-term retention of scientific content' (Roberts-Artal, 2018). This is perhaps particularly true in the geosciences owing to the historical and contemporary popularity of poetry, or poetic prose, related to landscapes, such as the work of John Tyndall (Jackson et al, 2020), Constance Naden (Boswell, 2014), Rachel Carson (Aalto, 2020), Seamus Heaney (Everett and Gearey, 2019), Norman Nicholson (e.g. 'Beck'; Whalley 2014) or Simon Armitage (e.g.…”