Nobel Laureate to speak at Commencement

Poet Seamus Heaney will address graduates on May 22. Seamus Heaney, the acclaimed poet and Nobel Laureate, will deliver the main address at the University's 244th Commencement ceremony on May 22. Heaney's visit will break Penn's recent string of big-name, politically oriented Commencement speakers. "Mr. Heaney is one of the world's most accomplished scholars and teachers," University President Judith Rodin said. "And we are very, very pleased that he has agreed to speak to our graduates and their guests and will accept our recognition for his enormously important contributions to literature." Rodin said the University plans to bestow upon Heaney an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree during the ceremony. Unlike speakers of the recent past, Heaney's name is not one that brings with it instant name recognition for many Penn students. "He is probably not as well known, in general," Senior Class President Lisa Marshall said. But Marshall noted that though Heaney's name may be unknown to students, he is reputed to be a "phenomenal speaker." "If he gives a good speech, I don't think [the students] will be disappointed," she said. And English Department Chairman John Richetti called Heaney "the most exciting Commencement speaker I've heard of, not only at Penn, but at other universities." "He's not some two-bit politician," Richetti added. "He's not Ted Koppel or Barbara Bush. They are not my idea of good Commencement speakers." Heaney, a native of Northern Ireland, was born in 1939 in County Derry. He earned a degree in English from Queens College in Belfast and went on to hold teaching positions at St. Joseph's College, Queens College and Oxford University. In 1966, he published his award-winning collection Death of a Naturalist and, in 1967, Door into the Dark. His compilation of poems entitled Wintering Out, published in 1972, won the Denis Devlin Award and Writer-in-Residence Award from the American Irish Foundation. The 1975 release North won Heaney both the E.M. Forster Award and the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize. Heaney received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 and has most recently served as the Harvard University Bolyston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory as well as the Ralph Waldo Emerson poet in-residence. Heaney has also received enormous attention for his recent translation of the epic poem Beowulf, which was the best-selling book in Great Britain for a time. "Seamus Heaney truly is a literary giant," Rodin said. "He has not only earned critical acclaim, but is easily one of the most popular poets of our time." Marshall said she thought it was good that this year's speaker was selected "from the literary field as opposed to politics." Past Commencement speakers have included actor and comedian Bill Cosby in 1997, former President Jimmy Carter in 1998 and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin last year.