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Seamus Heaney MRIA
Heaney in 1982
Born	(1939-04-13)13 April 1939 Tamniaran, near Castledawson, Northern Ireland
Died	30 August 2013(2013-08-30) (aged 74) Blackrock, Dublin, Ireland
Resting place	St. Mary's Church, Bellaghy, Northern Ireland
Occupation	Poet playwright translator
Alma mater	Queen's University Belfast
Period	1966–2013
Notable works	List of notable works Death of a Naturalist (1966) North (1975) Field Work (1979) The Spirit Level (1996) Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (translation, 1999) District and Circle (2006) Human Chain (2010)
Spouse	Marie Devlin ​(m. 1965)​
Children	3

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". Robert Pinsky has stated that "with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller." Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world".

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. 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".

Early life

Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four-foot box, a foot for every year.

Heaney was born on 13 April 1939 at the family farmhouse called Mossbawn, 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), a farmer and cattle dealer, and the eighth child of ten born to James and Sarah Heaney. Patrick was introduced to cattle dealing by his uncles, who raised him after his parents' early deaths. Heaney's mother was Margaret Kathleen McCann (1911–1984), whose relatives worked at a local linen mill. Heaney remarked on the inner tension between the rural Gaelic past exemplified by his father and the industrialized Ulster exemplified by his mother.

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.

Heaney played Gaelic football for Castledawson GAC, the club in the area of his birth, as a boy, and did not change to Bellaghy when his family moved there. 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

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

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, which spurred him to write poetry. "Suddenly, the matter of contemporary poetry was the material of my own life," he said. He graduated in 1961 with a First Class Honours degree.

Heaney studied for a teacher certification at St Joseph's Teacher Training College in Belfast (now merged with St Mary's, University College), and began teaching at St Thomas' Secondary Intermediate School in Ballymurphy, Belfast. The headmaster of this school was the writer Michael McLaverty from County Monaghan, who introduced Heaney to the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh. With McLaverty's mentorship, Heaney first started to publish poetry in 1962. Sophia Hillan describes how McLaverty was like a foster father to the younger Belfast poet. In the introduction to McLaverty's Collected Works, Heaney summarised the poet's contribution and influence: "His voice was modestly pitched, he never sought the limelight, yet for all that, his place in our literature is secure." Heaney's poem "Fosterage", in the sequence "Singing School", from North (1975), is dedicated to him.

In 1963 Heaney began lecturing at St Joseph's, and joined the Belfast Group, a poets' workshop organized by Philip Hobsbaum, then an English lecturer at Queen's University. Through this, Heaney met other Belfast poets, including Derek Mahon and Michael Longley.

Heaney met Marie Devlin, a native of Ardboe, County Tyrone, while at St Joseph's in 1962; they married in August 1965 and would go on to have three children. A school teacher and 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. 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. 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. The same year, he was appointed as a lecturer in Modern English Literature at Queen's 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 volume, Door into the Dark.

1970–1984

Heaney taught as a visiting professor in English at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1970–1971 academic year. In 1972, he left his lectureship in Belfast, moved to Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland, and began writing on a full-time basis. That year, he published his third collection, Wintering Out. In 1975, Heaney's next volume, North, was published. A pamphlet of prose poems entitled Stations was published the same year.

In 1976 Heaney was appointed Head of English at Carysfort College in Dublin and moved with his family to the suburb of 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).

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."

Born and educated in Northern Ireland, Heaney stressed that he was Irish and not British. 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. In autumn 1984, his mother, Margaret, died.

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. In 1986, Heaney received a Litt.D. from Bates College. His father, Patrick, died in October the same year. The loss of both parents within two years affected Heaney deeply, and he expressed his grief in poems. In 1988, a collection of his critical essays, The Government of the Tongue, was published.

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". The poem inspired the title of Amnesty International's highest honour, the Ambassador of Conscience Award.

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.

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.

In 1990 The Cure at Troy, a play based on Sophocles's Philoctetes, 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).

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". 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." He and his wife Marie were immediately taken from the airport to Áras an Uachtaráin for champagne with President Mary Robinson. He would refer to the prize discreetly as "the N thing" in personal exchanges with others.

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.

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

2000s

In 2000 Heaney was awarded an honorary doctorate and delivered the commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2002, Heaney was awarded an honorary doctorate from Rhodes University and delivered a public lecture on "The Guttural Muse".

In 2003 the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry was opened at Queen's University Belfast. It houses the Heaney Media Archive, a record of Heaney's entire oeuvre, along with a full catalogue of his radio and television presentations. 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. 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.

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." Heaney 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, he cancelled all public engagements for several months. He was in County Donegal at the time of the 75th birthday of Anne Friel, wife of playwright Brian Friel. He read the works of Henning Mankell, Donna Leon and Robert Harris while in hospital. Among his visitors was former President Bill Clinton.

Heaney's District and Circle won the 2006 T. S. Eliot Prize. 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.

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. 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.

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.

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. 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." 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." 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. 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.

In December 2011 Heaney donated his personal literary notes to the National Library of Ireland. 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.

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.

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. 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. 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.

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

Death

Seamus Heaney died in the Blackrock Clinic in Dublin on 30 August 2013, aged 74, following a short illness. After a fall outside a restaurant in Dublin, 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. 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.

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, from 8 a.m. to 9:15 p.m. on the day of the funeral, of his Collected Poems album, recorded by Heaney in 2009. His poetry collections sold out rapidly in Irish bookshops immediately following his death.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Poet Michael Longley, a close friend of Heaney, said: "I feel like I've lost a brother." Thomas Kinsella said he was shocked, but John Montague said he had known for some time that the poet was not well. Playwright Frank McGuinness called Heaney "the greatest Irishman of my generation: he had no rivals." Colm Tóibín wrote: "In a time of burnings and bombings Heaney used poetry to offer an alternative world." Gerald Dawe said he was "like an older brother who encouraged you to do the best you could do". Theo Dorgan said, " 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." Playwright Tom Stoppard said, "Seamus never had a sour moment, neither in person nor on paper". 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."

Many memorial events were held, including a commemoration at Emory University, Harvard University, Oxford University and the Southbank Centre, London. Leading US poetry organisations also met in New York to commemorate the death.

Work

In order that human beings bring about the most radiant conditions for themselves to inhabit, it is essential that the vision of reality which poetry offers should be transformative, more than just a printout of the given circumstances of its time and place. The poet who would be most the poet has to attempt an act of writing that outstrips the conditions even as it observes them.

Naturalism

At one time Heaney's books made up two-thirds of the sales of living poets in the UK. His work often deals with the local surroundings of Ireland, particularly in Northern Ireland, where he was born and lived until young adulthood. Speaking of his early life and education, he commented, "I learned that my local County Derry experience, which I had considered archaic and irrelevant to 'the modern world', was to be trusted. They taught me that trust and helped me to articulate it." Death of a Naturalist (1966) and Door into the Dark (1969) mostly focus on the details of rural, parochial life.

In a number of volumes, beginning with Door into the 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." Poems such as "Bogland" and "Bog Queen" addressed political struggles directly for the first time.

Politics

Allusions to sectarian differences, widespread in Northern Ireland throughout his lifetime, can be found in his poems. His books Wintering Out (1973) and North (1975) seek to interweave commentary on the Troubles with a historical context and wider human experience. 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.

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." 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.

Heaney is described by critic Terry Eagleton as "an enlightened cosmopolitan liberal", 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." Reflections on what Heaney identifies as "tribal conflict" 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."

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." He stated, "You don't have to love it. You just have to permit it."

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." He stated that his "cultural starting point" was "off-centre". 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.

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.

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".

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.

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).

"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."

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". 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.

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". 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.

Legacy

The Seamus Heaney HomePlace, in Bellaghy, is a literary and arts centre which commemorates Heaney's legacy. 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.

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.

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

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
• 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
• 1967 Cholmondeley Award
• 1968 Somerset Maugham Award
• 1968 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
• 1975 E. M. Forster Award
• 1975 Duff Cooper Prize for North
• 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature
• 1996 Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
• 1997 Elected Saoi of Aosdána
• 1998 St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates
• 2000 Elected to the American Philosophical Society
• 2001 Golden Wreath of Poetry, given by Struga Poetry Evenings for life achievement in the field of poetry
• 2004 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement
• 2005 Irish PEN Award
• 2006 T. S. Eliot Prize for District and Circle
• 2007 Poetry Now Award for District and Circle
• 2009 David Cohen Prize
• 2011 Poetry Now Award for Human Chain
• 2011 Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize, Lifetime Recognition Award

See also

• List of Nobel laureates in Literature
• List of people on the postage stamps of Ireland

References

1. ^ "Obituary: Heaney 'the most important Irish poet since Yeats'". Irish Times. 30 August 2013.
2. ^ Corcoran, Neil (30 August 2013). "Seamus Heaney obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 November 2023.
3. ^ "Faces of the week". BBC News. 19 January 2007. Retrieved 9 April 2010.
4. Sutherland, John (19 March 2009). "Seamus Heaney deserves a lot more than £40,000". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 April 2010.
5. Pinsky, Robert. The Eco Press, Hopewell ISBN 0-88001-217-X
6. Craig, Patricia (30 August 2013). "Seamus Heaney obituary: Nobel Prize-winning Irish Poet". The Independent. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
7. Heaney, Seamus (1998). Opened Ground. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-52678-8.
8. "Seamus Heaney: Headstone for poet's grave unveiled". BBC News. 14 August 2015. Retrieved 12 April 2019.
9. "Biography of Irish Writer Seamus Heaney". www.seamusheaney.org. Archived from the original on 24 February 2010. Retrieved 20 February 2010. Heaney was born on 13th April 1939, the eldest of nine children at the family farm called Mossbawn in the Townland of Tamniarn in Newbridge near Castledawson, Northern Ireland, ... Archived at Wayback Engine.
10. ^ Parker, Michael (1993). Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. p. 221. ISBN 0-87745-398-5. The deaths of his mother in the autumn of 1984 and of his father in October 1986 left a colossal space, one which he has struggled to fill through poetry.
11. "A Note on Seamus Heaney". inform.orbitaltec.ne. Retrieved 20 April 2009. Seamus Heaney was born on 13 April 1939, the first child of Patrick and Margaret Kathleen (née McCann) Heaney, who then lived on a fifty-acre farm called Mossbawn, in the townland of Tamniarn, County Derry, Northern Ireland.
12. ^ "Biography". Nobel Media. Retrieved 23 May 2010.
13. Verdonk, Peter (2002). Stylistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 57. ISBN 0-19-437240-5.
14. Parker, Michael (1993). Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. p. 3. ISBN 0-87745-398-5. Mrs Heaney bore nine children, Seamus, Sheena, Ann, Hugh, Patrick, Charles, Colum, Christopher, and Dan.
15. ^ McCrum, Robert (18 July 2009). "Seamus Heaney: A life of rhyme". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 July 2009.
16. "Tragic death of brother (4) that inspired Seamus Heaney recalled". belfasttelegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
17. "Heaney, Seamus: Mid-Term Break". Litmed.med.nyu.edu. 27 October 1999. Retrieved 20 November 2010.
18. Carney, Jim (5 April 2020). "Why have football and hurling remained a cultural wasteland for our writers and artists?". Sunday Independent.
19. ^ "Your Place and Mine: Bellaghy – Seamus Heaney". BBC. Retrieved 12 April 2019.
20. Heaney, Seamus (13 April 2002). "Sweet airs that delight". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 June 2021.
21. "Biography". British Council. Archived from the original on 9 October 2012. Retrieved 23 May 2010.
22. ^ Ed. Bernard O'Donoghue The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney (2009) Cambridge University Press pxiii ISBN 978-0-521-54755-0. Retrieved 23 May 2010.
23. Sophia Hillan, New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Autumn, 2005), pp. 86–106. "Wintered into Wisdom: Michael McLaverty, Seamus Heaney, and the Northern Word-Hoard". University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies)
24. McLaverty, Michael (2002) Collected Short Stories, Blackstaff Press Ltd, p. xiii, ISBN 0-85640-727-5.
25. Sophia Hillan (20 October 2017). "Michael McLaverty, Seamus Heaney and the writerly bond". The Irish Times.
26. Peter Badge (2008). Nobel Faces: A Gallery of Nobel Prize Winners. John Wiley & Sons. p. 504. ISBN 978-3-527-40678-4.
27. Mick Heaney (22 January 2021). "Don't sweat the big stuff: Top earner Tubridy sticks to small talk". The Irish Times. By way of full disclosure, I need to mention that Tubridy also makes several kind comments about my father, Seamus Heaney, throughout the week.
28. Andrew Motion (17 August 2014). "Door into the Dark opened the portals to a different future". The Guardian.
29. O'Shea, Edward (2016). "Seamus Heaney at Berkeley, 1970–71". Southern California Quarterly. 98 (2): 157–193. doi:10.1525/ucpsocal.2016.98.2.157. ISSN 0038-3929.
30. "Seamus Heaney". Nobel Prize.
31. Floyd Collins (2003). Seamus Heaney: The Crisis of Identity. University of Delaware Press. p. 76. ISBN 978-0-87413-805-4.
32. "Biography". Aosdána.
33. "Fordham Notes: Seamus Heaney's "Verses for a Fordham Commencement"". Fordham Notes. 30 August 2013. Retrieved 3 November 2016.
34. "Irish Nobel Prize Poet Seamus Heaney Dies Aged 74 -VIDEO". Ibtimes.co.uk. 30 August 2013. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
35. The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney, "Heaney in Public" by Dennis O'Driscoll (p56-72). ISBN 0-521-54755-5.
36. "Barclay Agency profile". Barclayagency.com. Archived from the original on 8 May 2012. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
37. British Council biography of Heaney. Retrieved 19 April 2010.
38. "Seamus Heaney, Poet". Frontline Defenders. Retrieved 30 November 2014.
39. "From the Republic of Conscience". Amnesty International. Retrieved 30 November 2014.
40. "Seamus Heaney Exhibit", Emory University, January 2014
41. "Heaney 'catches the heart off guard'". Harvard News Office. Harvard University. 2 October 2008. Retrieved 15 May 2010. Over the years, readings by poet Seamus Heaney have been so wildly popular that his fans are called "Heaneyboppers."
42. "Play Listing". Irish Playography. Irish Theatre Institute. Retrieved 24 August 2007.
43. "Royal Society of Literature All Fellows". Royal Society of Literature. Archived from the original on 5 March 2010. Retrieved 9 August 2010.
44. "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1995". Nobelprize. 7 October 2010. Retrieved 7 October 2010.
45. ^ Clarity, James F. (9 October 1995). "Laureate and Symbol, Heaney Returns Home". The New York Times.
46. Boland, Rosita (17 June 2017). "Michael Longley: 'Being 77 and three-quarters is the best time of my life'". The Irish Times. Retrieved 17 June 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". Rambles.net. Retrieved 20 November 2010.
48. "Seamus Heaney MRIA 1939–2013 – A Very Special Academician". ria.ie. 30 August 2013. Archived from the original on 26 April 2014. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
49. "Seamus Heaney". aosdána.artscouncil.ie. 30 August 2013. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
50. "Trinity College Dublin announces new Professorship – Seamus Heaney Professorship in Irish Writing". Trinity College Dublin. 17 December 2012.
51. University of Pennsylvania. Honorary Degree awarded. Retrieved 19 September 2010.
52. "Rhodes Department of English Annual Report 2002-2003" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 14 April 2008. Retrieved 18 October 2007. from the Rhodes University website.
53. The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen's University Belfast website
54. "Emory Acquires Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney Letters". 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.
55. "Poet Heaney donates papers to Emory". The Augusta Chronicle. 25 September 2003. Retrieved 25 September 2003.
56. Emory University. Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Book Library (MARBL) Archived 1 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine. Online collection of the Belfast Group archive.
57. Eminem, The Way I Am, autobiography, cover sheet. Published 21 October 2008.
58. "Seamus Heaney praises Eminem". BBC News. 30 June 2003. Retrieved 9 April 2010.
59. ^ "Heaney bid farewell at funeral", Belfast Telegraph, 2 September 2013.
60. Today Programme, BBC Radio 4, 16 January 2007.
61. "Poet 'cried for father' after stroke". BBC News. 20 July 2009. Retrieved 20 July 2009.
62. Kelly, Antoinette (19 July 2009). "Nobel winner Seamus Heaney recalls secret visit from Bill Clinton: President visit to Heaney's hospital bed after near-fatal stroke". Irish Central. Retrieved 19 July 2009.
63. "Heaney wins TS Eliot poetry prize". BBC News. 15 January 2007. Retrieved 15 January 2007.
64. "Announcement of Awards". University College Dublin.
65. "Estate of Seamus Heaney-Stepping Stones". seamusheaney.com. Retrieved 31 December 2021.
66. "Collected Poems: Seamus Heaney". Faber and Faber. 2 April 2009. Archived from the original on 4 May 2010. Retrieved 24 April 2010.
67. "Heaney at 70". RTÉ. April 2009. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
68. "Seamus Heaney 70th birthday commemorative Irish Times supplement". The Irish Times. April 2009. Retrieved 24 April 2010.
69. "Féile an Phobail, Festival of the People, 2010 programme". Official website. Archived from the original on 23 August 2010. Retrieved 12 July 2010. Archived at Wayback Engine.
70. ^ Page, Benedicte (6 October 2010). "Seamus Heaney wins £10k Forward poetry prize for Human Chain". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 October 2010.
71. Kellaway, Kate (22 August 2010). "Human Chain by Seamus Heaney". The Observer. Retrieved 22 August 2010.
72. ^ Tóibín, Colm (21 August 2010). "Human Chain by Seamus Heaney – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 August 2010.
73. Naughton, John (8 May 2011). "Britain's top 300 intellectuals". The Observer. Retrieved 8 May 2011.
74. "Songs of the Scribe Sung by Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin". Journal of Music. 6 December 2011.
75. Telford, Lyndsey (21 December 2011). "Seamus Heaney declutters home and donates personal notes to National Library". Irish Independent. Retrieved 21 December 2011.
76. Madden, Anne (22 December 2011). "Seamus Heaney's papers go to Dublin, but we don't mind, insists QUB". Belfast Telegraph. Retrieved 22 December 2011.
77. Prize, Griffin Poetry (7 June 2012). "2012 – Seamus Heaney". Griffin Poetry Prize. Retrieved 1 September 2013.
78. "Seamus Heaney: The Music of What Happens". Emory Library.
79. "Seamus Heaney: The Music of What Happens". Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 15 April 2015.
80. "Woodruff Library Welcomes Seamus Heaney Exhibit". 28 January 2014.
81. Alison Flood (10 September 2015). "New Seamus Heaney translation to be published next year". The Guardian.
82. ^ HEANEY, Seamus : Death notice The Irish Times, 30 September 2013.
83. McGreevy, Ronan (30 August 2013). "Tributes paid to 'keeper of language' Seamus Heaney". The Irish Times. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
84. ^ Higgins to lead mourners at funeral Mass for poet Sunday Independent, 1 September 2013.
85. "Seamus Heaney laid to rest in Bellaghy", Irish Times, 2 September 2013.
86. "Seamus Heaney's last words were 'Noli timere', son tells funeral", The Guardian, 2 September 2013.
87. Heaney, Mick (12 September 2015) "Mick Heaney: My father's famous last words; Seamus Heaney's son writes about his father's final message to his family: 'Noli timere'", The Irish Times.
88. "Funeral of Seamus Heaney to be broadcast live on RTÉ", TheJournal.ie, 1 September 2013.
89. "Heaney books sell out amid massive demand", Irish Times, 5 September 2013.
90. Statement from Áras an Uachtaráin – Seamus Heaney Archived 25 May 2014 at the Wayback Machine Áras an Uachtaráin, 30 August 2013.
91. President Michael D Higgins pays tribute to his friend Seamus Heaney on YouTube RTÉ News, 31 August 2013.
92. ^ Tributes to Seamus Heaney, BBC News Northern Ireland, 30 August 2013.
93. ^ "Poet Seamus Heaney dies aged 74". BBC News. 30 August 2013. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
94. "President and Taoiseach lead tributes to the late Seamus Heaney: Tributes paid to the Nobel Laureate who died this morning at the age of 74". Irish Independent. 30 August 2013. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
95. ^ Higgins, Charlotte; McDonald, Henry (30 August 2013). "Seamus Heaney's death 'leaves breach in language itself': Tributes flow in from fellow writers after poet who won Nobel prize for literature dies in Dublin aged 74". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
96. Tóibín, Colm (30 August 2013). "Seamus Heaney's books were events in our lives". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
97. "Heaney deserves place among the pantheon, says Dorgan". The Irish Times. 30 August 2013. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
98. "Emory honors literary icon with 'A Tribute to Seamus Heaney'". 23 September 2014. Retrieved 15 April 2015.
99. "A Tribute To Seamus Heaney". Retrieved 15 April 2015.
100. "Seamus Heaney: A Memorial Celebration". 7 November 2013. Retrieved 18 December 2022 – via YouTube.
101. "A poet's own epitaphs". 8 November 2013. Retrieved 4 November 2022.
102. "Bodleian Library – SPECIAL EVENT: Oxford Tribute to Seamus Heaney". Retrieved 15 April 2015.
103. "Poets Gather to Remember Seamus Heaney in New York City on 11 November at 7:00 p.m." Retrieved 15 April 2015.
104. ^ "Biography". 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. Irish Academic Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-7165-3368-9.
107. Ciarán O'Rourke (10 October 2020). "Did Seamus Heaney Write Political Poems?". Independent Left (Ireland).
108. Ezgi Ustundag. "Expressing Humanity During 'The Troubles:' The Poetry of Seamus Heaney". Duke University.
109. O'Connell, Shaun (1 February 1985). "Station Island, Seamus Heaney". Boston Review. Retrieved 2 October 2010.
110. Eagleton, Terry (11 November 1999). "Terry Eagleton reviews 'Beowulf' translated by Seamus Heaney · LRB 11 November 1999". London Review of Books. 21 (22). Lrb.co.uk. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
111. ^ Potts, Robert (7 April 2001). "The view from Olympia". 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". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 20 November 2010.
113. McElroy, Steven (21 January 2007). "The Week Ahead: Jan. 21 – 27". 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". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 October 2003.
116. video tribute.
117. Flood, Alison (14 November 2017). "Seamus Heaney's biographer races to see poet's faxes before they fade". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 September 2021.
118. "BBC Two – Seamus Heaney and the music of what happens". BBC.
119. literary Review, "Burdens of a Nobel Laureate" October 2023
120. Excerpt: Virgil (7 March 2016). "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, The Society of Authors.
122. Past winners of the Cholmondeley Awards Archived 23 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine, The Society of Authors.
123. The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize Archived 23 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine, W & G Foyle Ltd.
124. Seamus Heaney, American Academy of Arts and Letters.
125. Past Winners of the Duff Cooper Prize Archived 23 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine, theduffcooperprize.org
126. Lynch, Brian (30 August 2013). "Heaney's gift of seeing beauty in everything". Irish Independent. Retrieved 23 April 2019.
127. "Saint Louis Literary Award | Saint Louis University". slu.edu. Archived from the original on 23 August 2016. Retrieved 25 July 2016.
128. Saint Louis University Library Associates. "Recipients of the Saint Louis Literary Award". Archived from the original on 31 July 2016. Retrieved 25 July 2016.
129. "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 15 July 2021.
130. O'Driscoll, Dennis, (2008) Stepping Stones: interviews with Seamus Heaney, p. xxviii. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
131. "Kenyon Review for Literary Achievement". KenyonReview.org.
132. "Irish PEN Award for Literature", Irish PEN.
133. ^ "Heaney wins 'Irish Times' poetry award", Irish Times, 26 March 2011.
134. Heaney work a unanimous choice Irish Times, 31 March 2007.
135. Ronan McGreevy (18 November 2011). "Heaney honoured at book awards". The Irish Times. Retrieved 23 April 2019.
136. Newington, Giles (16 June 2012). "Heaney wins top Canadian prize". The Irish Times. Retrieved 16 June 2012.

External links

• Seamus Heaney on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture on 7 December 1995 Crediting Poetry
• Seamus Heaney at IMDb
• Seamus Heaney at the Poetry Foundation
• Seamus Heaney at the Poetry Archive
• Seamus Heaney at the Academy for American Poets
• Portraits of Seamus Heaney at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• BBC Your Paintings in partnership PCF. Painting by Peter Edwards
• Seamus Heaney collected news and commentary at The Guardian
• Henri Cole (Fall 1997). "Seamus Heaney, The Art of Poetry No. 75". The Paris Review. Fall 1997 (144).
• Lannan Foundation reading and conversation with Dennis O'Driscoll, 1 October 2003. (Audio / video – 40 mins). Prose transcript.
• 1998 Whiting Writers' Award Keynote Speech
• Seamus Heaney: Man of Words and Grace November–December 2013.
• "History and the homeland" video from The New Yorker. 15 October 2008. Paul Muldoon, interviews Heaney. (1 hr).
• Archival material at Leeds University Library

v t e Beowulf
Old English Alliterative verse Kenning
Clans (characters)	Geats Beowulf Heardred Hygd Hygelac Hundings Scyldings Æschere Healfdene Heorogar Hroðgar Unferð Scylfings Eadgils Eanmund Ohthere Onela Ongentheow Waegmundings Ecgþeow Weohstan Wiglaf Wulfings Wealhtheow Monsters Grendel Grendel's mother The Dragon
Translating Beowulf	List of translations Seamus Heaney Beowulf: A New Verse Translation J. R. R. Tolkien Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" Beowulf and the Critics "On Translating Beowulf" "Sellic Spell" Finn and Hengest
Scholars	Nora K. Chadwick Michael D. C. Drout Robert D. Fulk Kevin Kiernan Leonard Neidorf John D. Niles Geoffrey Russom Tom Shippey
Related	Adaptations Anglo-Saxon paganism Battle of Finnsburg Beowulf and Middle-Earth Heorot Hrunting Nægling Nowell Codex

v t e Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature
1901–1920	1901: Sully Prudhomme 1902: Theodor Mommsen 1903: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson 1904: Frédéric Mistral / José Echegaray 1905: Henryk Sienkiewicz 1906: Giosuè Carducci 1907: Rudyard Kipling 1908: Rudolf Eucken 1909: Selma Lagerlöf 1910: Paul Heyse 1911: Maurice Maeterlinck 1912: Gerhart Hauptmann 1913: Rabindranath Tagore 1914 1915: Romain Rolland 1916: Verner von Heidenstam 1917: Karl Gjellerup / Henrik Pontoppidan 1918 1919: Carl Spitteler 1920: Knut Hamsun
1921–1940	1921: Anatole France 1922: Jacinto Benavente 1923: W. B. Yeats 1924: Władysław Reymont 1925: George Bernard Shaw 1926: Grazia Deledda 1927: Henri Bergson 1928: Sigrid Undset 1929: Thomas Mann 1930: Sinclair Lewis 1931: Erik Axel Karlfeldt (posthumously) 1932: John Galsworthy 1933: Ivan Bunin 1934: Luigi Pirandello 1935 1936: Eugene O'Neill 1937: Roger Martin du Gard 1938: Pearl S. Buck 1939: Frans Eemil Sillanpää 1940
1941–1960	1941 1942 1943 1944: Johannes V. Jensen 1945: Gabriela Mistral 1946: Hermann Hesse 1947: André Gide 1948: T. S. Eliot 1949: William Faulkner 1950: Bertrand Russell 1951: Pär Lagerkvist 1952: François Mauriac 1953: Winston Churchill 1954: Ernest Hemingway 1955: Halldór Laxness 1956: Juan Ramón Jiménez 1957: Albert Camus 1958: Boris Pasternak 1959: Salvatore Quasimodo 1960: Saint-John Perse
1961–1980	1961: Ivo Andrić 1962: John Steinbeck 1963: Giorgos Seferis 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre (declined award) 1965: Mikhail Sholokhov 1966: Shmuel Yosef Agnon / Nelly Sachs 1967: Miguel Ángel Asturias 1968: Yasunari Kawabata 1969: Samuel Beckett 1970: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1971: Pablo Neruda 1972: Heinrich Böll 1973: Patrick White 1974: Eyvind Johnson / Harry Martinson 1975: Eugenio Montale 1976: Saul Bellow 1977: Vicente Aleixandre 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer 1979: Odysseas Elytis 1980: Czesław Miłosz
1981–2000	1981: Elias Canetti 1982: Gabriel García Márquez 1983: William Golding 1984: Jaroslav Seifert 1985: Claude Simon 1986: Wole Soyinka 1987: Joseph Brodsky 1988: Naguib Mahfouz 1989: Camilo José Cela 1990: Octavio Paz 1991: Nadine Gordimer 1992: Derek Walcott 1993: Toni Morrison 1994: Kenzaburō Ōe 1995: Seamus Heaney 1996: Wisława Szymborska 1997: Dario Fo 1998: José Saramago 1999: Günter Grass 2000: Gao Xingjian
2001–2020	2001: V. S. Naipaul 2002: Imre Kertész 2003: J. M. Coetzee 2004: Elfriede Jelinek 2005: Harold Pinter 2006: Orhan Pamuk 2007: Doris Lessing 2008: J. M. G. Le Clézio 2009: Herta Müller 2010: Mario Vargas Llosa 2011: Tomas Tranströmer 2012: Mo Yan 2013: Alice Munro 2014: Patrick Modiano 2015: Svetlana Alexievich 2016: Bob Dylan 2017: Kazuo Ishiguro 2018: Olga Tokarczuk 2019: Peter Handke 2020: Louise Glück
2021–present	2021: Abdulrazak Gurnah 2022: Annie Ernaux 2023: Jon Fosse 2024: Han Kang 2025: to be determined

• 1939 births
• 2013 deaths
• People from Bellaghy
• People educated at St Columb's College
• Writers from Dublin (city)
• 20th-century writers from Northern Ireland
• 21st-century writers from Northern Ireland
• Alumni of Queen's University Belfast
• Castledawson Gaelic footballers
• Aosdána members
• Saoithe
• David Cohen Prize recipients
• Essayists from Northern Ireland
• Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
• Fellows of St John's College, Oxford
• Formalist poets
• Harvard University faculty
• Translators from Northern Ireland
• Nobel laureates from Northern Ireland
• British Nobel laureates
• Nobel laureates in Literature
• Struga Poetry Evenings Golden Wreath laureates
• Translators from Irish
• Translators from Old English
• Translators from Polish
• Translators from Scottish Gaelic
• Translators of Brian Merriman
• Translators to English
• 20th-century dramatists and playwrights from Northern Ireland
• 20th-century poets from Northern Ireland
• 20th-century Irish poets
• Male poets from Northern Ireland
• 21st-century dramatists and playwrights from Northern Ireland
• 21st-century poets from Northern Ireland
• Members of the Royal Irish Academy
• Oxford Professors of Poetry
• Irish PEN Award for Literature winners
• 20th-century Irish translators
• 21st-century translators
• Male dramatists and playwrights from Northern Ireland
• Male essayists
• 20th-century British essayists
• 21st-century British essayists
• Male writers from Northern Ireland
• Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
• T. S. Eliot Prize winners
• Corresponding fellows of the British Academy
• Members of the American Philosophical Society
• Writers from County Londonderry
• People from Castledawson