“I do know that one of the best incubating times for me and beating out the beats of a poem, is on long drives.  And my wife always knows, because driving on long journeys with the spouse is very stilling.  She sees my fingers on the steering wheel, beating out the thing. That is true.  Many, many poems that I have conceived of and started are in that shut-eyed, well not literally shut-eyed.  But you know how you go 50 miles before you waken up. The car element; that is certainly one trance that is there.  The other is… I have to say, going to this cottage which is an old 19th century gate lodge and it brings me back to that first house, in a way, that I was in because it used to have a latch and the sound of a latch was like the sound of the primal world.  I felt psychologically, physically safe in it.  I felt that my first self was guaranteed by this place.  I always found it conducive to writing.  In fact, so satisfactory, that I almost didn’t need to write. So the car, and the cottage, and now the attic. 

I used to very much like claustrophobic conditions – facing the wall with a low-set ceiling.  In fact in the cottage we had this lovely, old, low ceiling and one of the different attitudes… one of the things that my wife and I disagreed about was she liked the idea of a skylight.  And I said, no, no, no, no, no. Keep the hutch of the hatch down.  So when I was in Harvard one time, and I came back, and I went upstairs in the cottage – ooooh, there was a skylight. Actually, it was a tremendous change for me and it was something to do with getting near fifty, I think.  I lifted up my eyes to the heavens and… I have a light in my attic at home  – a door into the dark; a door into the light is what we’re after now. 

….I used to find chain smoking very helpful, actually. I’m sure many writers in the room have stopped smoking and there’s a crisis.”

–Seamus Heaney, in an interview with Dennis O’Driscoll.

For more: “Readings & Conversations: Seamus Heaney with Dennis O’Driscoll“