TIFTON — Five presentations with storytelling venues ranging from Ireland to Scotland to King Arthur’s England will highlight the Jess Usher Lecture Series at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College.

Dr. Jeff Newberry, a professor of English and ABAC’s poet-in-residence, opens the series at 7 p.m., Sept. 27, when he speaks on “The Right Kind of Tradition: Seamus Heaney, Irish Identity and the Southern Problem,” college officials said in a statement.

Each event is open to the public at no charge with no ticket required. All events in the series will be held in Howard Auditorium on the ABAC campus.

Formerly known as the ABAC Lecture Series, the special collection of presenters has been renamed in memory of Dr. Jess Usher, a former ABAC faculty member and lecturer in the series, who passed away in 2021.

Newberry’s presentation focuses on Heaney, a Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet, who was raised in Northern Ireland, site of the famous “troubles” of the 1970s and ‘80s.

“Heaney’s move to the Republic of Ireland represents his movement to a sense of Irish heritage that’s anchored in both locale and local culture,” Newberry said. “Heaney’s writing about Ireland demonstrates a kind of tradition that isn’t exclusionary.

“This tradition provides an effective model for the contemporary American Southeast, a place of changing demographics that complicate the notion of heritage.”