9/11 and Transnational Memory: Seamus Heaney’s 'Anything Can Happen'

Abstract

In this essay I examine the role of poetry in the production of a transnational memory of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre. Although 9/11 was a transnational event, the commemorative culture has largely been shaped within a nationalist frame, which remembers the traumatic event in terms of national identity. The attack on the World Trade Centre in Manhattan had a global reach, however, and the collective memory of the event cannot be contained within national borders. As Michael Rothberg observes: ‘In its preconditions, in its mass media unfolding, and in its deadly repercussions, September 11 was a global event. It demands a literature that takes risks, speaks in multiple tongues, and dares to move beyond nearsightedness’ (‘Seeing Terror, Feeling Art’ ch. 6). Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s contribution to the literature of 9/11, ‘Anything Can Happen’, foregrounds the intersecting transnational and transhistorical dimensions of 9/11 memory. Drawing on concepts and approaches from transnational memory studies, I aim to identity the poem’s contribution to a transnational memory culture of 9/11. This analysis supports my broader argument that poetry opens up new perspectives on an event that has most often been commemorated within a national frame.