Seamus Heaney

Seamus Justin Heaney MRIA (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and
translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is Death of a
Naturalist (1966), his first major published volume. American poet Robert Lowell described him as "the
most important Irish poet since Yeats", and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have
said that he was "the greatest poet of our age".[3][4] Robert Pinsky has stated that "with his wonderful gift
of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller."[5] Upon his death in 2013, The Independent
described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world".[6]

Heaney was born in the townland of Tamniaran between Castledawson and Toomebridge, Northern
Ireland. His family moved to nearby Bellaghy when he was a boy. He became a lecturer at St. Joseph's
College in Belfast in the early 1960s, after attending Queen's University and began to publish poetry. He
lived in Sandymount, Dublin, from 1976 until his death.[7] He lived part-time in the United States from
1981 to 2006. He was a professor at Harvard from 1981 to 1997, and their Poet in Residence from 1988
to 2006. From 1989 to 1994, he was also the Professor of Poetry at Oxford. In 1996 he was made a
Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and in 1998 was bestowed the title Saoi of Aosdána. He
received numerous prestigious awards.

Heaney is buried at St. Mary's Church, Bellaghy, Northern Ireland. The headstone bears the epitaph
"Walk on air against your better judgement", from his poem "The Gravel Walks".[8]

Early life
Heaney was born on 13 April 1939 at the family farmhouse called Mossbawn,[9] between Castledawson
and Toomebridge; he was the first of nine children. In 1953, his family moved to Bellaghy, a few miles
away, which is now the family home. His father was Patrick Heaney (d. October 1986),[10] a farmer and
cattle dealer, and the eighth child of ten born to James and Sarah Heaney.[11] Patrick was introduced to
cattle dealing by his uncles, who raised him after his parents' early deaths.[12] Heaney's mother was
Margaret Kathleen McCann (1911–1984), whose relatives worked at a local linen mill.[13][14][15] Heaney
remarked on the inner tension between the rural Gaelic past exemplified by his father and the
industrialized Ulster exemplified by his mother.[12]

Heaney attended Anahorish Primary School, and won a scholarship to St Columb's College, a Roman
Catholic boarding school in Derry when he was twelve years old. While studying at St Columb's,
Heaney's younger brother Christopher was killed in February 1953 at the age of four in a road accident.
The poems "Mid-Term Break" and "The Blackbird of Glanmore" are related to his brother's death.[16][17]
Heaney played Gaelic football for Castledawson GAC,
the club in the area of his birth, as a boy, and did not Seamus Heaney
MRIA
change to Bellaghy when his family moved there.[18]
However, he has remarked that he became involved
culturally with Bellaghy GAA Club in his late teens,
acting in amateur plays and composing treasure hunts
for the club.

Career

1957–1969
Heaney studied English Language and Literature at
Queen's University Belfast starting in 1957. While
there, he found a copy of Ted Hughes's Lupercal,
Heaney in 1982
which spurred him to write poetry. "Suddenly, the
Born 13 April 1939
matter of contemporary poetry was the material of my
Tamniaran, near
own life," he said.[3] He graduated in 1961 with a First
Castledawson,
Class Honours degree.[19]
Northern Ireland

Heaney studied for a teacher certification at St Joseph's Died 30 August 2013 (aged 74)
Teacher Training College in Belfast (now merged with Blackrock, Dublin, Ireland
St Mary's, University College), and began teaching at Resting St. Mary's Church, Bellaghy,
place Northern Ireland
St Thomas' Secondary Intermediate School in
Ballymurphy, Belfast.[20] The headmaster of this Occupation Poet, playwright, translator
school was the writer Michael McLaverty from County Alma mater Queen's University Belfast
Monaghan, who introduced Heaney to the poetry of Period 1966–2013
Patrick Kavanagh.[21][22] With McLaverty's Notable List of notable works
mentorship, Heaney first started to publish poetry in works
Death of a Naturalist (1966)
1962. Sophia Hillan describes how McLaverty was
North (1975)
like a foster father to the younger Belfast poet.[23] In
the introduction to McLaverty's Collected Works, Field Work (1979)
Heaney summarised the poet's contribution and The Spirit Level (1996)
influence: "His voice was modestly pitched, he never Beowulf: A New Verse
sought the limelight, yet for all that, his place in our Translation (translation, 1999)
literature is secure."[24] Heaney's poem "Fosterage", in District and Circle (2006)
the sequence "Singing School", from North (1975), is Human Chain (2010)
dedicated to him.[25] Spouse Marie Devlin ​(m. 1965)​[1][2]

In 1963 Heaney began lecturing at St Joseph's, and Children 3

joined the Belfast Group, a poets' workshop
organized by Philip Hobsbaum, then an English
Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
lecturer at Queen's University. Through this,
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
Heaney met other Belfast poets, including Derek
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
Mahon and Michael Longley.[19]
Heaney met Marie Devlin, a native of Ardboe,
County Tyrone, while at St Joseph's in 1962; they A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
married in August 1965 [15][19] and would go on to from "Mid-Term break",
have three children. [1][2] A school teacher and Death of a Naturalist (1966)
writer, Devlin published Over Nine Waves (1994), a
collection of traditional Irish myths and legends.
Heaney's first book, Eleven Poems, was published in November 1965 for
the Queen's University Festival.[26] In 1966 their first son, Michael, was
born. He earned a living at the time by writing for The Irish Times, often
on the subject of radio.[27] A second son, Christopher, was born in 1968.

Heaney initially sought publication with Dolmen Press in Dublin for his
first volume of work. While waiting to hear back, he was signed with
Faber and Faber and published Death of a Naturalist in 1966, and Faber
remained his publisher for the rest of his life. This collection was met with
much critical acclaim and won several awards, including the Gregory
Award for Young Writers and the Geoffrey Faber Prize.[22] The same year,
he was appointed as a lecturer in Modern English Literature at Queen's
Seamus Heaney in 1970
University Belfast. In 1968, Heaney and Michael Longley undertook a
reading tour called Room to Rhyme, which
increased awareness of the poet's work. The
following year, he published his second major My grandfather cut more turf in a day
volume, Door into the Dark.[28] Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
1970–1984 To drink it, then fell to right away
Heaney taught as a visiting professor in
English at the University of California, Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Berkeley in the 1970–1971 academic year. [29] Over his shoulder, going down and down
In 1972, he left his lectureship in Belfast, For the good turf. Digging.
moved to Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland,
and began writing on a full-time basis. That The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
year, he published his third collection, Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Wintering Out. In 1975, Heaney's next Through living roots awaken in my head.
volume, North, was published. [30] A pamphlet But I've no spade to follow men like them.
of prose poems entitled Stations was
published the same year.[31] Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
In 1976 Heaney was appointed Head of I'll dig with it.
English at Carysfort College in Dublin and
moved with his family to the suburb of from "Digging", Death of a Naturalist (1966)
Sandymount. His next collection, Field Work,
was published in 1979. Selected Poems 1965-
1975 and Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–1978 were published in 1980. When Aosdána, the
national Irish Arts Council, was established in 1981, Heaney was among those elected into its first group.
(He was subsequently elected a Saoi, one of its five elders and its highest honour, in 1997).[32]
Also in 1981, Heaney travelled to the United States as a visiting professor at Harvard, where he was
affiliated with Adams House. He was awarded two honorary doctorates, from Queen's University and
from Fordham University in New York City (1982). At the Fordham commencement ceremony on 23
May 1982, Heaney delivered his address as a 46-stanza poem entitled "Verses for a Fordham
Commencement."[33]

Born and educated in Northern Ireland, Heaney stressed that he was Irish and not British.[34] Following
the success of the Field Day Theatre Company's production of Brian Friel's Translations, the founders
Brian Friel and Stephen Rea decided to make the company a permanent group. Heaney joined the
company's expanded Board of Directors in 1981.[35] In autumn 1984, his mother, Margaret, died.[10][36]

1985–1999
Heaney became a tenured faculty member at Harvard, as the
Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory (formerly visiting
professor) 1985–1997, and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Poet in
Residence at Harvard 1998–2006.[37] In 1986, Heaney received a
Litt.D. from Bates College. His father, Patrick, died in October the
same year.[10] The loss of both parents within two years affected
Heaney deeply, and he expressed his grief in poems.[10] In 1988, a
collection of his critical essays, The Government of the Tongue, Marie and Seamus Heaney at the
was published. Dominican Church, Kraków, Poland,
4 October 1996
In 1985 Heaney wrote the poem "From the Republic of
Conscience" at the request of Amnesty International Ireland. He
wanted to "celebrate United Nations Day and the work of Amnesty".[38] The poem inspired the title of
Amnesty International's highest honour, the Ambassador of Conscience Award.[39]

In 1988 Heaney donated his lecture notes to the Rare Book Library of Emory University in Atlanta,
Georgia, after giving the notable Ellmann Lectures there.[40]

In 1989 Heaney was elected Oxford Professor of Poetry, which he held for a five-year term to 1994. The
chair does not require residence in Oxford. Throughout this period, he divided his time between Ireland
and the United States. He also continued to give public readings. These events were so well attended and
keenly anticipated that those who queued for tickets with such enthusiasm were sometimes dubbed
"Heaneyboppers", suggesting an almost teenybopper fan base.[41]

In 1990 The Cure at Troy, a play based on Sophocles's Philoctetes,[42] was published. The next year, he
published another volume of poetry, Seeing Things (1991). Heaney was named an Honorary Patron of the
University Philosophical Society, Trinity College Dublin, and was elected an Honorary Fellow of the
Royal Society of Literature (1991).[43]

In 1993 Heaney guest-edited The Mays Anthology, a collection of new writing from students at the
University of Oxford and University of Cambridge. That same year, he was awarded the Dickinson
College Arts Award and returned to the Pennsylvania college to deliver the commencement address and
receive an honorary degree. He was scheduled to return to Dickinson again to receive the Harold and
Ethel L. Stellfox Award—for a major literary figure—at the time of his death in 2013. Irish poet Paul
Muldoon was named recipient of the award that year, partly in recognition of the close connection
between the two poets.

Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 for "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth,
which exalt everyday miracles and the living past".[44] He was on holiday in Greece with his wife when
the news broke. Neither journalists nor his own children could reach him until he arrived at Dublin
Airport two days later, although an Irish television camera traced him to Kalamata. Asked how he felt to
have his name added to the Irish Nobel pantheon of W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and Samuel
Beckett, Heaney responded: "It's like being a little foothill at the bottom of a mountain range. You hope
you just live up to it. It's extraordinary."[45] He and his wife Marie were immediately taken from the
airport to Áras an Uachtaráin for champagne with President Mary Robinson.[45] He would refer to the
prize discreetly as "the N thing" in personal exchanges with others.[46]

Heaney's 1996 collection The Spirit Level won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award; he repeated the
success in 1999 with Beowulf: A New Verse Translation.[47]

Heaney was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1996 and was admitted in 1997.[48] In the
same year, Heaney was elected Saoi of Aosdána.[49] In 1998, Heaney was elected Honorary Fellow of
Trinity College Dublin.[50]

2000s
In 2000 Heaney was awarded an honorary doctorate and delivered
the commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania.[51]
In 2002, Heaney was awarded an honorary doctorate from Rhodes
University and delivered a public lecture on "The Guttural
Muse".[52]
The Seamus Heaney Centre for
In 2003 the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry was opened at Poetry, which was officially opened
Queen's University Belfast. It houses the Heaney Media Archive, a at Queen's University Belfast in
2004
record of Heaney's entire oeuvre, along with a full catalogue of his
radio and television presentations.[53] That same year, Heaney
decided to lodge a substantial portion of his literary archive at Emory
University as a memorial to the work of William M. Chace, the
university's recently retired president.[54][55] The Emory papers
represented the largest repository of Heaney's work (1964–2003). He
donated these to help build their large existing archive of material from
Irish writers including Yeats, Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson, Michael
Longley and other members of the Belfast Group.[56]

In 2003, when asked if there was any figure in popular culture who
aroused interest in poetry and lyrics, Heaney praised American rap artist
Eminem from Detroit, saying, "He has created a sense of what is possible.
He has sent a voltage around a generation. He has done this not just
through his subversive attitude but also his verbal energy."[57][58] Heaney Seamus Heaney in 2009
wrote the poem "Beacons at Bealtaine" to mark the 2004 EU Enlargement. He read the poem at a
ceremony for the 25 leaders of the enlarged European Union, arranged by the Irish EU presidency.

In August 2006 Heaney had a stroke. Although he recovered and joked, "Blessed are the pacemakers"
when fitted with a heart monitor,[59] he cancelled all public engagements for several months.[60] He was
in County Donegal at the time of the 75th birthday of Anne Friel, wife of playwright Brian Friel.[15][61]
He read the works of Henning Mankell, Donna Leon and Robert Harris while in hospital. Among his
visitors was former President Bill Clinton.[15][62]

Heaney's District and Circle won the 2006 T. S. Eliot Prize.[63] In 2008, he became artist of honour in
Østermarie, Denmark, and Seamus Heaney Stræde (street) was named after him. In 2009, Heaney was
presented with an Honorary-Life Membership award from the University College Dublin (UCD) Law
Society, in recognition of his remarkable role as a literary figure.[64]

Faber and Faber published Dennis O'Driscoll's book Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney in
2008; this has been described as the nearest thing to an autobiography of Heaney.[65] In 2009, Heaney
was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. He recorded a spoken word album, over 12 hours
long, of himself reading his poetry collections to commemorate his 70th birthday, which occurred on 13
April 2009.[66][67][68]

2010s
He spoke at the West Belfast Festival in July 2010 in celebration of his mentor, the poet and novelist
Michael McLaverty, who had helped Heaney to first publish his poetry.[69]

In September 2010 Faber published Human Chain, Heaney's twelfth collection. Human Chain was
awarded the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection, one of the major poetry prizes Heaney had never
previously won, despite having been twice shortlisted.[70][71] The book, published 44 years after the
poet's first, was inspired in part by Heaney's stroke in 2006, which left him "babyish" and "on the brink".
Poet and Forward judge Ruth Padel described the work as "a collection of painful, honest and delicately
weighted poems ... a wonderful and humane achievement."[70] Writer Colm Tóibín described Human
Chain as "his best single volume for many years, and one that contains some of the best poems he has
written... is a book of shades and memories, of things whispered, of journeys into the underworld, of
elegies and translations, of echoes and silences."[72] In October 2010, the collection was shortlisted for
the T. S. Eliot Prize.

Heaney was named one of "Britain's top 300 intellectuals" by The Observer in 2011, though the
newspaper later published a correction acknowledging that "several individuals who would not claim to
be British" had been featured, of which Heaney was one.[73] That same year, he contributed translations
of Old Irish marginalia for Songs of the Scribe, an album by Traditional Singer in Residence of the
Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin.[74]

In December 2011 Heaney donated his personal literary notes to the National Library of Ireland.[75] Even
though he admitted he would likely have earned a fortune by auctioning them, Heaney personally packed
up the boxes of notes and drafts and, accompanied by his son Michael, delivered them to the National
Library.[76]
In June 2012 Heaney accepted the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry's Lifetime Recognition Award
and gave a speech in honour of the award.[77]

Heaney was compiling a collection of his work in anticipation of Selected Poems 1988–2013 at the time
of his death. The selection includes poems and writings from Seeing Things, The Spirit Level, the
translation of Beowulf, Electric Light, District and Circle, and Human Chain (fall 2014).

In February 2014 Emory University premiered Seamus Heaney: The Music of What Happens, the first
major exhibition to celebrate the life and work of Seamus Heaney since his death.[78] The exhibit holds a
display of the surface of Heaney's personal writing desk that he used in the 1980s as well as old
photographs and personal correspondence with other writers.[79] Heaney died in August 2013 during the
curatorial process of the exhibition. Though the exhibit's original vision to celebrate Heaney's life and
work remains at the forefront, there is a small section commemorating his death and its influence.[80]

In September 2015 it was announced that Heaney's family would posthumously publish his translation of
Book VI of The Aeneid in 2016.[81]

Death
Seamus Heaney died in the Blackrock Clinic in Dublin on 30
August 2013, aged 74, following a short illness.[82][83][84] After a
fall outside a restaurant in Dublin,[84] he entered a hospital for a
medical procedure but died at 7:30 the following morning before it
took place. His funeral was held in Donnybrook, Dublin, on the
morning of 2 September 2013, and he was buried in the evening at
St. Mary's Church, Bellaghy his home village, in the same
graveyard as his parents, younger brother, and other family
members.[82][85] His son Michael revealed at the funeral mass that
his father texted his final words, "Noli timere" (Latin: "Be not
afraid"), to his wife, Marie, minutes before he died.[59][86][87]

His funeral was broadcast live the following day on RTÉ

television and radio and was streamed internationally at RTÉ's
website. RTÉ Radio 1 Extra transmitted a continuous broadcast,
Heaney's grave at St. Mary's
from 8 a.m. to 9:15 p.m. on the day of the funeral, of his Collected Church, Bellaghy
Poems album, recorded by Heaney in 2009.[88] His poetry
collections sold out rapidly in Irish bookshops immediately
following his death.[89]

Many tributes were paid to Heaney. President Michael D. Higgins said:

...we in Ireland will once again get a sense of the depth and range of the contribution of Seamus
Heaney to our contemporary world, but what those of us who have had the privilege of his
friendship and presence will miss is the extraordinary depth and warmth of his
personality...Generations of Irish people will have been familiar with Seamus' poems. Scholars
all over the world will have gained from the depth of the critical essays, and so many rights
organisations will want to thank him for all the solidarity he gave to the struggles within the
republic of conscience.[90]

President Higgins also appeared live from Áras an Uachtaráin on the Nine O'Clock News in a five-minute
segment in which he paid tribute to Seamus Heaney.[91]

Bill Clinton, former President of the United States, said:

Both his stunning work and his life were a gift to the world. His mind, heart, and his uniquely
Irish gift for language made him our finest poet of the rhythms of ordinary lives and a powerful
voice for peace...His wonderful work, like that of his fellow Irish Nobel Prize winners Shaw,
Yeats, and Beckett, will be a lasting gift for all the world.[92]

José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, said:

I am greatly saddened today to learn of the death of Seamus Heaney, one of the great European
poets of our lifetime. ... The strength, beauty and character of his words will endure for
generations to come and were rightly recognised with the Nobel Prize for Literature.[92]

Harvard University issued a statement:

We are fortunate and proud to have counted Seamus Heaney as a revered member of the
Harvard family. For us, as for people around the world, he epitomised the poet as a wellspring
of humane insight and artful imagination, subtle wisdom and shining grace. We will remember
him with deep affection and admiration.[92]

Poet Michael Longley, a close friend of Heaney, said: "I feel like I've lost a brother."[93] Thomas Kinsella
said he was shocked, but John Montague said he had known for some time that the poet was not well.[94]
Playwright Frank McGuinness called Heaney "the greatest Irishman of my generation: he had no
rivals."[95] Colm Tóibín wrote: "In a time of burnings and bombings Heaney used poetry to offer an
alternative world."[96] Gerald Dawe said he was "like an older brother who encouraged you to do the best
you could do".[95] Theo Dorgan said, "[Heaney's] work will pass into permanence. Everywhere I go there
is real shock at this. Seamus was one of us." His publisher, Faber and Faber, noted that "his impact on
literary culture is immeasurable."[97] Playwright Tom Stoppard said, "Seamus never had a sour moment,
neither in person nor on paper".[95] Andrew Motion, a former UK Poet Laureate and friend of Heaney,
called him "a great poet, a wonderful writer about poetry, and a person of truly exceptional grace and
intelligence."[93]
Many memorial events were held, including a commemoration at Emory University,[98] Harvard
University, Oxford University and the Southbank Centre, London.[99][100][101][102] Leading US poetry
organisations also met in New York to commemorate the death.[103]

Work

In order that human beings bring about the

Naturalism
most radiant conditions for themselves to
At one time Heaney's books made up two-thirds of the inhabit, it is essential that the vision of
sales of living poets in the UK.[3] His work often deals reality which poetry offers should be
with the local surroundings of Ireland, particularly in transformative, more than just a printout of
Northern Ireland, where he was born and lived until the given circumstances of its time and
young adulthood. Speaking of his early life and place. The poet who would be most the
education, he commented, "I learned that my local poet has to attempt an act of writing that
County Derry experience, which I had considered outstrips the conditions even as it observes
archaic and irrelevant to 'the modern world', was to be them.
trusted. They taught me that trust and helped me to
articulate it."[104] Death of a Naturalist (1966) and —from "Joy Or Night: Last Things in the
Door into the Dark (1969) mostly focus on the details Poetry of W. B. Yeats and Philip Larkin",
of rural, parochial life.[104] W. D. Thomas Memorial Lecture delivered
by Seamus Heaney at University College
In a number of volumes, beginning with Door into the
of Swansea on 18 January 1993.
Dark (1969) and Wintering Out (1972), Heaney also
spent a significant amount of time writing on the
northern Irish bog. Particularly of note is the collection
of bog body poems in North (1975), featuring mangled bodies preserved in the bog. In a review by Ciaran
Carson, he said that the bog poems made Heaney into "the laureate of violence—a mythmaker, an
anthropologist of ritual killing...the world of megalithic doorways and charming noble barbarity."[105]
Poems such as "Bogland" and "Bog Queen" addressed political struggles directly for the first time.[106]

Politics
Allusions to sectarian differences, widespread in Northern Ireland throughout his lifetime, can be found
in his poems.[107][108] His books Wintering Out (1973) and North (1975) seek to interweave commentary
on the Troubles with a historical context and wider human experience.[104] While some critics accused
Heaney of being "an apologist and a mythologiser" of the violence, Blake Morrison suggests the poet

has written poems directly about the Troubles as well as elegies for friends and acquaintances
who have died in them; he has tried to discover a historical framework in which to interpret the
current unrest; and he has taken on the mantle of public spokesman, someone looked to for
comment and guidance... Yet he has also shown signs of deeply resenting this role, defending
the right of poets to be private and apolitical, and questioning the extent to which poetry,
however "committed", can influence the course of history.[104]
Shaun O'Connell in the New Boston Review notes that "those who see Seamus Heaney as a symbol of
hope in a troubled land are not, of course, wrong to do so, though they may be missing much of the
undercutting complexities of his poetry, the backwash of ironies which make him as bleak as he is
bright."[104] O'Connell notes in his Boston Review critique of Station Island:

Again and again Heaney pulls back from political purposes; despite its emblems of savagery,
Station Island lends no rhetorical comfort to Republicanism. Politic about politics, Station
Island is less about a united Ireland than about a poet seeking religious and aesthetic unity.[109]

Heaney is described by critic Terry Eagleton as "an enlightened cosmopolitan liberal",[110] refusing to be
drawn. Eagleton suggests: "When the political is introduced... it is only in the context of what Heaney
will or will not say."[111] Reflections on what Heaney identifies as "tribal conflict"[111] favour the
description of people's lives and their voices, drawing out the "psychic landscape". His collections often
recall the assassinations of his family members and close friends, lynchings and bombings. Colm Tóibín
wrote, "throughout his career there have been poems of simple evocation and description. His refusal to
sum up or offer meaning is part of his tact."[72]

Heaney published "Requiem for the Croppies", a poem that commemorates the Irish rebels of 1798, on
the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. He read the poem to both Catholic and Protestant
audiences in Ireland. He commented, "To read 'Requiem for the Croppies' wasn't to say 'up the IRA' or
anything. It was silence-breaking rather than rabble-rousing."[112] He stated, "You don't have to love it.
You just have to permit it."[112]

He turned down the offer of laureateship of the United Kingdom, partly for political reasons,
commenting, "I've nothing against the Queen personally: I had lunch at the Palace once upon a time."[112]
He stated that his "cultural starting point" was "off-centre".[112] A much-quoted statement was when he
objected to being included in The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry (1982). Although he was
born in Northern Ireland, his response to being included in the British anthology was delivered in his
poem "An Open Letter":

Don't be surprised if I demur, for, be advised

My passport's green.
No glass of ours was ever raised
To toast The Queen.[112]

Translation
He was concerned, as a poet and a translator, with the English language as it is spoken in Ireland but also
as spoken elsewhere and in other times; he explored Anglo-Saxon influences in his work and study. Critic
W. S. Di Piero noted

Whatever the occasion, childhood, farm life, politics and culture in Northern Ireland, other
poets past and present, Heaney strikes time and again at the taproot of language, examining its
genetic structures, trying to discover how it has served, in all its changes, as a culture bearer, a
world to contain imaginations, at once a rhetorical weapon and nutriment of spirit. He writes of
these matters with rare discrimination and resourcefulness, and a winning impatience with
received wisdom.[104]
Heaney's first translation was of the Irish lyric poem Buile Suibhne, published as Sweeney Astray: A
Version from the Irish (1984). He took up this character and connection in poems published in Station
Island (1984). Heaney's prize-winning translation of Beowulf (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000, Whitbread
Book of the Year Award) was considered groundbreaking in its use of modern language melded with the
original Anglo-Saxon "music".[104]

Plays and prose

His plays include The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes (1991). Heaney's 2004 play, The
Burial at Thebes, suggests parallels between Creon and the foreign policies of the Bush
administration.[113]

Heaney's engagement with poetry as a necessary engine for cultural and personal change is reflected in
his prose works The Redress of Poetry (1995) and Finders Keepers: Selected Prose: 1971–2001
(2001).[104]

"When a poem rhymes," Heaney wrote, "when a form generates itself, when a metre provokes
consciousness into new postures, it is already on the side of life. When a rhyme surprises and
extends the fixed relations between words, that in itself protests against necessity. When
language does more than enough, as it does in all achieved poetry, it opts for the condition of
overlife, and rebels at limit."[72]

He continues: "The vision of reality which poetry offers should be transformative, more than just a
printout of the given circumstances of its time and place".[72] Often overlooked and underestimated in the
direction of his work is his profound poetic debts to and critical engagement with 20th-century Eastern
European poets, and in particular Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz.[114]

Use in the school syllabus

Heaney's work is used extensively in the school syllabus internationally, including the anthologies The
Rattle Bag (1982) and The School Bag (1997) (both edited with Ted Hughes). Originally entitled The
Faber Book of Verse for Younger People on the Faber contract, Hughes and Heaney decided the main
purpose of The Rattle Bag was to offer enjoyment to the reader: "Arbitrary riches." Heaney commented
"the book in our heads was something closer to The Fancy Free Poetry Supplement".[115] It included
work that they would have liked to encounter sooner in their own lives, as well as nonsense rhymes,
ballad-type poems, riddles, folk songs and rhythmical jingles. Much familiar canonical work was not
included, since they took it for granted that their audience would know the standard fare. Fifteen years
later, The School Bag aimed at something different. The foreword stated that they wanted "less of a
carnival, more like a checklist." It included poems in English, Irish, Welsh, Scots and Scots Gaelic,
together with work reflecting the African-American experience.[115]

Legacy
The Seamus Heaney HomePlace, in Bellaghy, is a literary and arts centre which commemorates Heaney's
legacy.[116] His literary papers are held by the National Library of Ireland.
Following an approach by Fintan O'Toole, the Heaney family authorised a biography of the poet, with
access to family-held records (2017). O'Toole had been somewhat acquainted with Heaney and Heaney
had, according to his son, admired O'Toole's work.[117]

In November 2019 the documentary Seamus Heaney and the music of what happens was aired on BBC
Two. His wife Marie and his children talked about their family life and read some of the poems he wrote
for them. For the first time, Heaney's four brothers remembered their childhood and the shared
experiences that inspired many of his poems.[118]

In 2023 The Letters of Seamus Heaney was published, edited by Christopher Reid.[119]

Publications

Poetry: Main Collections

1966: Death of a Naturalist, Faber & Faber
1969: Door into the Dark, Faber & Faber
1972: Wintering Out, Faber & Faber
1975: North, Faber & Faber
1979: Field Work, Faber & Faber
1984: Station Island, Faber & Faber
1987: The Haw Lantern, Faber & Faber
1991: Seeing Things, Faber & Faber
1996: The Spirit Level, Faber & Faber
2001: Electric Light, Faber & Faber
2006: District and Circle, Faber & Faber
2010: Human Chain, Faber & Faber

Poetry: Selected Editions

1980: Selected Poems 1965–1975, Faber & Faber
1990: New Selected Poems 1966–1987, Faber & Faber
1998: Opened Ground: Poems 1966–1996, Faber & Faber
2014: New Selected Poems 1988–2013, Faber & Faber
2018: 100 Poems, Faber & Faber

Prose: Main Collections

1980: Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–1978, Faber & Faber
1988: The Government of the Tongue, Faber & Faber
1995: The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures, Faber & Faber

Prose: Selected Editions

2001: Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971–2001, Faber & Faber

Plays
1990: The Cure at Troy: A version of Sophocles' Philoctetes, Field Day
2004: The Burial at Thebes: A version of Sophocles' Antigone, Faber & Faber

Translations
1983: Sweeney Astray: A version from the Irish, Field Day
1992: Sweeney's Flight (with Rachel Giese, photographer), Faber & Faber
1993: The Midnight Verdict: Translations from the Irish of Brian Merriman and from the
Metamorphoses of Ovid, Gallery Press
1995: Laments, a cycle of Polish Renaissance elegies by Jan Kochanowski, translated with
Stanisław Barańczak, Faber & Faber
1999: Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, Faber & Faber
1999: Diary of One Who Vanished, a song cycle by Leoš Janáček of poems by Ozef Kalda,
Faber & Faber
2009: The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables, Faber & Faber
2016: Aeneid: Book VI, Faber & Faber[120]
2022: The Translations, Faber & Faber

Limited Editions and Booklets (poetry, prose, and translations)

1965: Eleven Poems, Queen's University
1968: The Island People, BBC
1968: Room to Rhyme, Arts Council N.I.
1969: A Lough Neagh Sequence, Phoenix
1970: Night Drive, Gilbertson
1970: A Boy Driving His Father to Confession, Sceptre Press
1973: Explorations, BBC
1975: Stations, Ulsterman Publications
1975: Bog Poems, Rainbow Press
1975: The Fire i' the Flint, Oxford University Press
1976: Four Poems, Crannog Press
1977: Glanmore Sonnets, Editions Monika Beck
1977: In Their Element, Arts Council N.I.
1978: Robert Lowell: A Memorial Address and an Elegy, Faber & Faber
1978: The Makings of a Music, University of Liverpool
1978: After Summer, Gallery Press
1979: Hedge School, Janus Press
1979: Ugolino, Carpenter Press
1979: Gravities, Charlotte Press
1979: A Family Album, Byron Press
1980: Toome, National College of Art and Design
1981: Sweeney Praises the Trees, Henry Pearson
1982: A Personal Selection, Ulster Museum
1982: Poems and a Memoir, Limited Editions Club
1983: An Open Letter, Field Day
1983: Among Schoolchildren, Queen's University
1984: Verses for a Fordham Commencement, Nadja Press
1984: Hailstones, Gallery Press
1985: From the Republic of Conscience, Amnesty International
1985: Place and Displacement, Dove Cottage
1985: Towards a Collaboration, Arts Council N.I.
1986: Clearances, Cornamona Press
1988: Readings in Contemporary Poetry, DIA Art Foundation
1988: The Sounds of Rain, Emory University
1988: The Dark Wood, Colin Smythe
1989: An Upstairs Outlook, Linen Hall Library
1989: The Place of Writing, Emory University
1990: The Tree Clock, Linen Hall Library
1991: Squarings, Hieroglyph Editions
1992: Dylan the Durable, Bennington College
1992: The Gravel Walks, Lenoir Rhyne College
1992: The Golden Bough, Bonnefant Press
1993: Keeping Going, Bow and Arrow Press
1993: Joy or Night, University of Swansea
1994: Extending the Alphabet, Memorial University of Newfoundland
1994: Speranza in Reading, University of Tasmania
1995: Oscar Wilde Dedication, Westminster Abbey
1995: Charles Montgomery Monteith, All Souls College
1995: Crediting Poetry: The Nobel Lecture, Gallery Press
1996: Commencement Address, UNC Chapel Hill
1997: Poet to Blacksmith, Pim Witteveen
1997: An After Dinner Speech, Atlantic Foundation
1998: Audenesque, Maeght
1999: The Light of the Leaves, Bonnefant Press
1999: Ballynahinch Lake, Sonzogni
2001: Something to Write Home About, Flying Fox
2001: Towers, Trees, Terrors, Università degli Studi di Urbino
2002: The Whole Thing: on the Good of Poetry, The Recorder
2002: Hope and History, Rhodes University
2002: A Keen for the Coins, Lenoir Rhyne College
2002: Hallaig, Sorley MacLean Trust
2002: Arion, a poem by Alexander Pushkin, translated from Russian, with a note by Olga
Carlisle, Arion Press
2003: Eclogues in Extremis, Royal Irish Academy
2003: Squarings, Arion Press
2004: Anything can Happen, Town House Publishers
2004: Room to Rhyme, University of Dundee
2004: The Testament of Cresseid, Enitharmon Press
2004: Columcille The Scribe, The Royal Irish Academy
2005: A Tribute to Michael McLaverty, Linen Hall Library
2005: The Door Stands Open, Irish Writers Centre
2005: A Shiver, Clutag Press
2007: The Riverbank Field, Gallery Press
2008: Articulations, Royal Irish Academy
2008: One on a Side, Robert Frost Foundation
2009: Spelling It Out, Gallery Press
2010: Writer & Righter, Irish Human Rights Commission
2012: Stone From Delphi, Arion Press
2013: The Last Walk, Gallery Press
2019: My Yeats, Yeats Society Sligo

Spoken word
2009: Collected Poems (audio recording by Heaney), RTÉ with the Lannan Foundation

Prizes and honours

1966 Eric Gregory Award[121]
1967 Cholmondeley Award[122]
1968 Somerset Maugham Award
1968 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize[123]
1975 E. M. Forster Award[124]
1975 Duff Cooper Prize for North[125]
1995 Nobel Prize in Literature[1]
1996 Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres[1]
1997 Elected Saoi of Aosdána[126]
1998 St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates[127][128]
2000 Elected to the American Philosophical Society[129]
2001 Golden Wreath of Poetry, given by Struga Poetry Evenings for life achievement in the
field of poetry[130]
2004 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement[131]
2005 Irish PEN Award[132]
2006 T. S. Eliot Prize for District and Circle[1]
2007 Poetry Now Award for District and Circle[133][134]
2009 David Cohen Prize[1]
2011 Poetry Now Award for Human Chain[133]
2011 Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award[135]
2012 Griffin Poetry Prize, Lifetime Recognition Award[136]
See also

Poetry portal

List of Nobel laureates in Literature

List of people on the postage stamps of Ireland

References
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2. Corcoran, Neil (30 August 2013). "Seamus Heaney obituary" ([Link]
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3. "Faces of the week" ([Link] BBC News. 19
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4. Sutherland, John (19 March 2009). "Seamus Heaney deserves a lot more than £40,000" (htt
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small talk" ([Link]
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need to mention that Tubridy also makes several kind comments about my father, Seamus
Heaney, throughout the week."
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46. Boland, Rosita (17 June 2017). "Michael Longley: 'Being 77 and three-quarters is the best
time of my life' " ([Link]
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2017. " 'Seamus once thanked me for the way I dealt with what he called 'the N Thing','
Longley says, making tea. 'The N thing?' I ask, halfway through my sardine sandwich. 'The
Nobel', he says. 'That I kept it in proportion – the way most of the world didn't. But I have
had to be very judicious answering questions about Seamus since he's been turned into a
kind of saint'."
47. "Beowulf: A New Translation" ([Link] [Link].
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50. "Trinity College Dublin announces new Professorship – Seamus Heaney Professorship in
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51. University of Pennsylvania. Honorary Degree awarded ([Link]
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eases/[Link]). press release. Emory University. 24 September 2003.
"When I was here this summer for commencement, I came to the decision that the
conclusion of President Chace's tenure was the moment of truth, and that I should now
lodge a substantial portion of my literary archive in the Woodruff Library, including the
correspondence from many of the poets already represented in its special collections," said
Heaney in making the announcement. "So I am pleased to say these letters are now here
and that even though President Chace is departing, as long as my papers stay here, they
will be a memorial to the work he has done to extend the university's resources and
strengthen its purpose."
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60. Today Programme, BBC Radio 4, 16 January 2007.
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97. "Heaney deserves place among the pantheon, says Dorgan" ([Link]
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98. "Emory honors literary icon with 'A Tribute to Seamus Heaney' " ([Link]
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99. "A Tribute To Seamus Heaney" ([Link]
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100. "Seamus Heaney: A Memorial Celebration" ([Link]
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103. "Poets Gather to Remember Seamus Heaney in New York City on 11 November at 7:00
p.m." ([Link]
ork-city-november-11-700-pm) Retrieved 15 April 2015.
104. "Biography" ([Link] Poetry Foundation.
105. O'Donoghue, Bernard (2009). The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney. Cambridge
University Press. p. 4.
106. Irene Gilsenan Nordin (2006). The body and desire in contemporary Irish poetry ([Link]
[Link]/books?id=0LZlAAAAMAAJ). Irish Academic Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-7165-
3368-9.
107. Ciarán O'Rourke (10 October 2020). "Did Seamus Heaney Write Political Poems?" ([Link]
[Link]/seamus-heaney-political-poems/). Independent Left (Ireland).
108. Ezgi Ustundag. "Expressing Humanity During 'The Troubles:' The Poetry of Seamus
Heaney" ([Link] Duke University.
109. O'Connell, Shaun (1 February 1985). "Station Island, Seamus Heaney" ([Link]
[Link]/BR10.1/[Link]). Boston Review. Retrieved 2 October 2010.
110. Eagleton, Terry (11 November 1999). "Terry Eagleton reviews 'Beowulf' translated by
Seamus Heaney · LRB 11 November 1999" ([Link]
ped-and-hooped-and-hirpling). London Review of Books. 21 (22). [Link]. Retrieved
30 August 2013.
111. Potts, Robert (7 April 2001). "The view from Olympia" ([Link]
001/apr/07/poetry.tseliotprizeforpoetry2001). The Guardian. Retrieved 7 April 2001.
112. Rahim, Sameer (11 May 2009). "Interview with Seamus Heaney: On the eve of his 70th
birthday, Seamus Heaney tells Sameer Rahim about his lifetime in poetry – and who he
thinks would make a good poet laureate" ([Link]
2/[Link]). The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived ([Link]
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-[Link]) from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 20 November
2010.
113. McElroy, Steven (21 January 2007). "The Week Ahead: Jan. 21 – 27" ([Link]
om/2007/01/21/arts/[Link]). The New York Times. Retrieved 21 January 2007.
114. Kay, Magdalena. In Gratitude for all the Gifts: Seamus Heaney and Eastern Europe.
University of Toronto Press, 2012. ISBN 1-4426-4498-2
115. Heaney, Seamus (25 October 2003). "Bags of enlightenment" ([Link]
m/books/2003/oct/25/[Link]). The Guardian. Retrieved 25 October 2003.
116. video tribute ([Link]
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117. Flood, Alison (14 November 2017). "Seamus Heaney's biographer races to see poet's faxes
before they fade" ([Link]
pher-races-to-see-poets-faxes-before-they-fade). The Guardian. Retrieved 23 September
2021.
118. "BBC Two – Seamus Heaney and the music of what happens" ([Link]
ammes/m000bxwv). BBC.
119. literary Review, "Burdens of a Nobel Laureate" ([Link]
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120. Excerpt: Virgil (7 March 2016). "From "The Aeneid" Book VI" ([Link]
gazine/2016/03/07/from-the-aeneid-book-vi). The New Yorker. Vol. 92, no. 4. Translated by
Seamus Heaney. p. 27.
121. Past Winners of the Eric Gregory Award ([Link]
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122. Past winners of the Cholmondeley Awards ([Link]
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s://[Link]/Prizes/Poetry/Cholmondeley/Past-winners) 23 April 2019 at
the Wayback Machine, The Society of Authors.
123. The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize ([Link]
Archived ([Link]
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124. Seamus Heaney ([Link] American
Academy of Arts and Letters.
125. Past Winners of the Duff Cooper Prize ([Link]
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[Link]
126. Lynch, Brian (30 August 2013). "Heaney's gift of seeing beauty in everything" ([Link]
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[Link]). Irish Independent. Retrieved 23 April 2019.
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original ([Link] on 23 August 2016. Retrieved
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ps://[Link]/web/20160731082313/[Link]
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ced). [Link]. Retrieved 15 July 2021.
130. O'Driscoll, Dennis, (2008) Stepping Stones: interviews with Seamus Heaney, p. xxviii.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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eview-award-for-literary-achievement/). [Link].
132. "Irish PEN Award for Literature" ([Link]
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133. "Heaney wins 'Irish Times' poetry award ([Link]
0326/[Link])", Irish Times, 26 March 2011.
134. Heaney work a unanimous choice ([Link]
[Link]) Irish Times, 31 March 2007.
135. Ronan McGreevy (18 November 2011). "Heaney honoured at book awards" ([Link]
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Retrieved 23 April 2019.
136. Newington, Giles (16 June 2012). "Heaney wins top Canadian prize" ([Link]
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External links
Seamus Heaney ([Link] on [Link] including the
Nobel Lecture on 7 December 1995 Crediting Poetry
Seamus Heaney ([Link] at IMDb
Seamus Heaney ([Link] at the Poetry
Foundation
Seamus Heaney ([Link]
g/poetryarchive/[Link]?poetId=1392) at the Poetry Archive
Seamus Heaney ([Link] at the Academy for American
Poets
Portraits of Seamus Heaney ([Link]
mp05395) at the National Portrait Gallery, London
BBC Your Paintings in partnership PCF ([Link]
155578). Painting by Peter Edwards
Seamus Heaney ([Link] collected news and
commentary at The Guardian
Henri Cole (Fall 1997). "Seamus Heaney, The Art of Poetry No. 75" ([Link]
[Link]/interviews/1217/the-art-of-poetry-no-75-seamus-heaney). The Paris Review. Fall
1997 (144).
Lannan Foundation reading and conversation ([Link]
ey-with-dennis-odriscoll) with Dennis O'Driscoll, 1 October 2003. (Audio / video – 40 mins).
Prose transcript ([Link]
1998 Whiting Writers' Award Keynote Speech ([Link]
mus-heaney)
Seamus Heaney: Man of Words and Grace ([Link]
[Link]/2013/11/seamus-heaneyjohn-smelcer/) November–December 2013.
"History and the homeland" video from ([Link]
8/10/[Link]) The New Yorker. 15 October 2008. Paul Muldoon, interviews
Heaney. (1 hr).
Archival material at Leeds University Library ([Link]
xplore/8473)

Retrieved from "[Link]