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Rosie Lavan

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Rosie Lavan
BornRosamund Lavan[1][2]
1984 (age 40–41)[3]
Truro, England
OccupationWriter
Academic
LanguageEnglish
NationalityBritish
Citizenship United Kingdom
EducationD.Phil.
M.St.
M.A.[4]
Alma materUniversity of Oxford
GenreLiterary criticism
Notable worksThe Poems of Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney and Society

Rosie Lavan is a Dublin-based writer, editor and academic born in Truro in 1984.[3] With Eleanor Lybeck, she directs the production company "Sidelong Glance".[5] Lavan has published extensively on Heaney, including a monograph Seamus Heaney and Society published with OUP in 2020,[6] and the forthcoming The Poems of Seamus Heaney from Faber in 2025.[7] She is currently an associate professor in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin.[8]

Early life

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Lavan was born and brought up in Truro, Cornwall's only city. Lybeck (née Lavan[9]), who she works with at "Sidelong Glance", is her younger sister. Their father left in 1993, when the two sisters were nine and five. They are the great granddaughters of the nineteenth-century stage clown Albert James.[10][11]

Education

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In 2002,[12] Lavan moved to Oxford to study English at St Anne's, graduating in 2005. She then trained as a journalist at City, University of London, getting an M.A. in Newspaper Journalism. She worked for a while, before returning to Oxford for an M.St. in English in 2010,[4] and then studied towards a DPhil under the supervision of Bernard O'Donoghue[13] at St Anne's, being awarded the degree in 2014.[8]

Work

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Following her training as a journalist, Lavan has worked for The Times, as a media assistant, and for House of Lords Hansard. In 2014–15, after earning her doctoral degree on the topic "Seamus Heaney and society, 1964 – 1994",[13] she was awarded stipendiary teaching positions in English at St Hugh's[14] and St Anne's Colleges, Oxford. Lavan has taught at Trinity College Dublin since September 2015.[8][15][16] She was welcomed as a Visiting Fellow at Moore Institute, University of Galway, in April 2016.[17] Here, she worked on her project "Representing Derry, 1968 – 2013" in collaboration with Dr Sean Ryder.[18]

Through "Sidelong Glance", a research-led production company founded by Lybeck in London in 2008, Lavan has co-produced several films, including Wild Laughter, which is a 2013[19] one-woman show about their paternal great grandfather Albert James, "an Edwardian stage clown". Since its debut, the show has been performed in Dublin, Oxford and Cambridge.[5][10][20] Following Wild Laughter, they've worked with a team[3] to produce Whose History?, a series of four short films in 2021: Let Her Witness It, eJoy of Cooking, Hey Joe and 2600. These tell "the stories of people who have lived, worked and studied on or nearby the University of Liverpool’s South Campus over the past 200 years."[21][22]

Lavan has spoken about[23][24][25] and published on Seamus Heaney extensively, including critical essays in the Oxonian Review ("Seamus Heaney and Oxford"[26]), the Honest Ulsterman ("Active Images: Heaney and Derry"[27]) and the Irish Literary Supplement ("Meditations on Seamus Heaney's Work"[28]), and several chapters, "'Mycenae Lookout' and the Example of Aeschylus" in Seamus Heaney and the Classics: Bann Valley Muses[29] and "Violence, Politics and the Poetry of the Troubles" in Irish Literature in Transition: 1940–1980.[30] During her time as a DPhil student at Oxford, Lavan was the Executive Editor at the Oxonian Review.[26] She published Seamus Heaney and Society, a monograph based on her PhD thesis, in 2020. Her thesis was written at Oxford between 2011 and 2014; and the book itself was "revised over the summers of 2016 and 2017" and published in April 2020.[31] In a 2024 London Review of Books article, John Kerrigan called the monograph an "excellent" book.[32] Another review, published in the Dublin Review of Books, said "Lavan's study is the real deal", considering it includes "large swathes of Heaney archive material".[33]

In May 2021, Lavan delivered Notre Dame's Annual Seamus Heaney Memorial Lecture on Heaney's poetry of collective experience.[34]

The Poems of Seamus Heaney, edited by Lavan and Bernard O'Donoghue, whose essay "Heaney, Yeats, and the Language of Pastoral" was also part of Seamus Heaney and the Classics,[29] is scheduled to be published by Faber & Faber in October 2025.[35][36] Farrar, Straus and Giroux are set to publish the "definitive collection" in the US in November 2025.[37]

In 2016, when Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, Lavan said she agreed "with the designation of his lyrics as literature"[38] when many were divided about the win.[39] Lavan was a member of the selection panel for the 2018 Rooney Prize;[40][41][42] and has also written about the importance of Eavan Boland's poetry in the Irish literary landscape in an article in the Irish Independent.[43] In 2025, she chaired an 'In Conversation' event about Boland during the celebration[44] of the renaming of Trinity's "Berkeley Library" to "Eavan Boland Library", making it the first building on the campus to be named after a woman.[45]

Books

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Lavan has published a monograph and, as editor, has a forthcoming poetry collection, both about Seamus Heaney.

  • The Poems of Seamus Heaney, edited with Bernard O'Donoghue and Matthew Hollis (Faber, 2025) ISBN 9780571340385
  • Seamus Heaney and Society (Oxford English Monographs, 2020) ISBN 9780198822974

References

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  1. ^ "Comparative Criticism Discussion Group". The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH). Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  2. ^ Ladkin, Sam (17 June 2016). "'And now it is the serpent's turn': the rhetoric of the figura serpentinata in Frank O'Hara's 'In Memory of My Feelings'". Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry. 32 (1). Taylor & Francis: 21–44. doi:10.1080/02666286.2016.1143767. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  3. ^ a b c "Cast and crew". University of Liverpool. Retrieved 6 July 2025.
  4. ^ a b "The Editorial Board" (PDF). STAAR: St Anne's Academic Review. 4 (Winter 2012). St Anne's, Oxford: 4. ISSN 2048-2566. Retrieved 9 July 2025.
  5. ^ a b "Dr Eleanor Lybeck". University of Liverpool. Retrieved 6 July 2025.
  6. ^ "Seamus Heaney and Society". Oxford University Press. 2020. Retrieved 6 July 2025.
  7. ^ "Faber to publish definitive edition of Seamus Heaney's poetry". The Irish Times. 6 February 2025. ISSN 0791-5144. Retrieved 6 July 2025.
  8. ^ a b c "Dr. Rosie Lavan". Trinity College Dublin. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  9. ^ "Supplement (1)" (PDF). The Oxford Gazette (5071): 52. 8 October 2014. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  10. ^ a b Lybeck, Eleanor; Lavan, Rosie (17 November 2016). "The clown who died on Christmas Eve". The Irish Times. ISSN 0791-5144. Retrieved 6 July 2025.
  11. ^ "Performing the Archive: Wild Laughter and the Work of Sidelong Glance". English Shared Futures. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  12. ^ "Donations to College, 2021 – 2022" (PDF). The Ship. St Anne's, Oxford: 123. 2023. Retrieved 9 July 2025.
  13. ^ a b Lavan, Rosie. "Seamus Heaney and society, 1964 - 1994". ORA: Oxford University Research Archive. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  14. ^ "Minutes – The First Stated Meeting, Michaelmas Term" (PDF). St Hugh's, Oxford. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  15. ^ "Dr Rosie Lavan". MASSOLIT. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  16. ^ "About". Sidelong Glance. 27 August 2013. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  17. ^ "Visiting Fellows: 2015–16". University of Galway. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  18. ^ "April 2016 Visiting Fellows". Moore Institute, University of Galway. 7 April 2016. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  19. ^ "Performance log". Sidelong Glance. 15 December 2014. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  20. ^ "Wild Laughter". Smock Alley Theatre. 6 May 2016. Retrieved 6 July 2025.
  21. ^ "Whose History?". University of Liverpool. 2021. Retrieved 6 July 2025.
  22. ^ "Rosie Lavan". IMDb. Retrieved 6 July 2025.
  23. ^ "Newsletter 23: February 2015" (PDF). Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  24. ^ "Oxford Irish History Seminar". Oxford Talks. 2020. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  25. ^ Lavan, Rosie (28 August 2020). "Seamus Heaney's "hope and history," Ireland's favorite poet's vision of the world". Irish Central. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  26. ^ a b Lavan, Rosie (11 November 2013). "Seamus Heaney and Oxford". The Oxonian Review. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  27. ^ Lavan, Rosie. "Active Images". The Honest Ulsterman. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  28. ^ Lavan, Rosie (1 March 2017). "Meditations on Seamus Heaney's Work". Irish Literary Supplement (Spring 2017): 25–26. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  29. ^ a b Harrison, Stephen; Macintosh, Fiona; Eastman, Helen, eds. (2019). Seamus Heaney and the Classics: Bann Valley Muses (Hardcover). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198805656.
  30. ^ Lavan, Rosie (2020). "Violence, Politics and the Poetry of the Troubles". In Patten, Eve (ed.). Irish Literature in Transition: 1940–1980. Cambridge University Press. pp. 216–232. doi:10.1017/9781108616348.014. ISBN 978-1-108-61634-8. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  31. ^ "Between the Lines: Rosie Lavan". Trinity College Dublin. 19 October 2020. Retrieved 6 July 2025.
  32. ^ Kerrigan, John (25 April 2024). "Wobbly, I am". London Review of Books. 46 (8). ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 6 July 2025.
  33. ^ Dawe, Gerald (1 November 2020). "The Power of Concentration". Dublin Review of Books. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  34. ^ "The Annual Seamus Heaney Memorial Lecture: Rosie Lavan, Trinity College Dublin, on "'Tuning the Medium': Seamus Heaney and the First-Person Plural"". Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame. 2021. Retrieved 6 July 2025.
  35. ^ Wood, Heloise (6 February 2025). "Faber to publish Seamus Heaney collection". The Bookseller. ISSN 0006-7539. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  36. ^ O'Mahony, Jake (6 February 2025). "Faber to publish collection of Seamus Heaney's complete works". Hotpress. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  37. ^ "The Poems of Seamus Heaney". Macmillan Publishers. 2025. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  38. ^ ""John Lennon must be turning in his urn": Trinity English lecturers on Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize for Literature". The University Times. 15 October 2016. ISSN 2009-261X. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  39. ^ "Should Bob Dylan Have Won the Nobel Prize for Literature?". PEN America. 14 October 2016. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  40. ^ "Writer Caitriona Lally wins 2018 Rooney Prize". Trinity College Dublin. 25 September 2018. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  41. ^ Hogg, Connor (25 September 2018). "Caitriona Lally Wins Trinity's Rooney Prize for Irish Literature". The University Times. ISSN 2009-261X. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  42. ^ Mitchell, Victoria (25 September 2018). "Trinity awards Caitriona Lally Rooney Prize for Irish Literature". Trinity News. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  43. ^ Lavan, Rosie (2 May 2020). "How poet Eavan Boland expanded the horizon of Irish writing". The Irish Independent. ISSN 0021-1222. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  44. ^ "Trinity celebrates renaming of Library after poet Eavan Boland". Trinity College Dublin. 11 March 2025. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  45. ^ "Trinity renames its main Library after poet Eavan Boland". Trinity College Dublin. 9 October 2024. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
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