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|---|---|
 Heaney addresses the Law Society(University College Dublin), 2009 | |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Period | 1966–present |
| Notable awards | Nobel Prize in Literature 1995 T. S. Eliot Prize 2006 |
Seamus Heaney (born 13 April 1939, Template:Pron-en) is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2006. He currently lives in Dublin.
Early life
Heaney was born on 13 April 1939 at the family farmhouse called Mossbawn, between Castledawson and Toomebridge in Northern Ireland; 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, Patrick Heaney, a local of Castledawson, was the eighth child of ten born to James and Sarah Heaney. Patrick was a farmer but his real commitment was to cattle-dealing, to which he was introduced by the uncles who had cared for him after the early death of his own parents. Heaney's mother came from the McCann family, whose uncles and relations were employed in the local linen mill and whose aunt had worked as a maid for the mill owner's family. The poet has commented on the fact that his parentage thus contains both the Ireland of the cattle-herding Gaelic past and the Ulster of the Industrial Revolution; he considers this to have been a significant tension in his background.
Heaney initially attended Anahorish Primary School and when he was twelve-years-old, he won a scholarship to St. Columb's College, a Catholic boarding school situated in Derry. Heaney's brother, Christopher, was killed in a road accident at the age of four (while Heaney was studying at St. Columb's). The poems Mid-Term Break and The Blackbird of Glanmore focus on the death of Christopher.
Career
1957-1984
In 1957, Heaney travelled to Belfast to study English Language and Literature at the Queen's University of Belfast. During his time in Belfast he found a copy of Ted Hughes' Lupercal, which spurred him to write poetry. "Suddenly, the matter of contemporary poetry was the material of my own life" he has said. He graduated in 1961 with a First Class Honours degree. During teacher training at St Joseph's Teacher Training College in Belfast (now merged with St Mary's, University College). Heaney went on a placement to St Thomas' secondary Intermediate School in west Belfast. The headmaster of this school was the writer Michael MacLaverty from County Monaghan, who introduced Heaney to the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh. With McLaverty's mentorship, Heaney first started to publish poetry, beginning in 1962. Hillal 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 became a lecturer at St Joseph's and in the spring of 1963, after contributing various articles to local magazines, he came to the attention of Philip Hobsbaum, then an English lecturer at Queen's University. Hobsbaum was to set up a Belfast Group of local young poets (to mirror the success he had with the London group) and this would bring Heaney into contact with other Belfast poets such as Derek Mahon and Michael Longley. In August 1965 he married Marie Devlin, a school teacher and native of Ardboe, County Tyrone. (Devlin is a writer herself and, in 1994, published Over Nine Waves, 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 1967, Faber and Faber published his first major volume, called Death of a Naturalist. This collection met with much critical acclaim and went on to win several awards, the Gregory Award for Young Writers and the Geoffrey Faber Prize. Also in 1966, he was appointed as a lecturer in Modern English Literature at Queen's University Belfast and his first son, Michael, was born. A second son, Christopher, was born in 1968. That same year, with Michael Longley, Heaney took part in a reading tour called Room to Rhyme, which led to much exposure for the poet's work. In 1969, his second major volume, Door into the Dark, was published.
After a spell as guest lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, he returned to Queen's University in 1971. In 1972, Heaney left his lectureship at Belfast and moved to Dublin in the Republic of Ireland, working as a teacher at Carysfort College. In 1972, Wintering Out was published, and over the next few years Heaney began to give readings throughout Ireland, Britain, and the United States. In 1975, Heaney published his fourth volume, North. He became Head of English at Carysfort College in Dublin in 1976. His next volume, Field Work, was published in 1979. Selected Poems 1965-1975 and Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978 were published in 1980. When the Republic of Ireland established Aosdána, the national Irish Arts Council, 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 honor, in 1997). Also in 1981, he left Carysfort to become visiting professor at Harvard University. He was awarded two honorary doctorates, from Queen's University and from Fordham University in New York City (1982). At the Fordham commencement ceremony in 1982, Heaney delivered the commencement address in a 46-stanza poem entitled Verses for a Fordham Commencement. As he was born and educated in Northern Ireland, Heaney has felt the need to emphasise that he is Irish and not British. Following the success of the Field Day Theatre Company's production of Brian Friel's Translations, Heaney joined the company's expanded Board of Directors in 1981, when the company's founders Brian Friel and Stephen Rea decided to make the company a permanent group. In 1984 his mother, Margaret Kathleen Heaney, died.
After 1985
Heaney was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University (formerly Visiting Professor) 1985-1997 and Ralph Waldo Emerson Poet in Residence at Harvard 1998-2006. In 1989, he was elected Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, which he held for a five-year term to 1994. The chair does not require residence in Oxford, and throughout this period he was dividing his time between Ireland and America. He also continued to give public readings. His father, Patrick, died soon after publication of the 1987 volume, The Haw Lantern. In 1988, a collection of critical essays called The Government of the Tongue was published. In 1986, Heaney received a Litt.D. from Bates College. So well attended and keenly anticipated were these events that those who queued for tickets with such enthusiasm have sometimes been dubbed "Heaneyboppers", suggesting an almost teenybopper fanaticism on the part of his supporters.
In 1990, The Cure at Troy, a play based on Sophocles' Philoctetes, was published to much acclaim. In 1991, Seeing Things was published. Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 for what the Nobel committee described as "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past". In 1996, his collection The Spirit Level was published and won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. He repeated that success with the release of Beowulf: A New Translation. In 1998, Heaney officially opened the library of Saint Catherine's College, Armagh.
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. He also composed a poem called Beacons of Bealtaine for the 2004 EU Enlargement. The poem was read by Heaney at a ceremony for the twenty-five leaders of the enlarged European Union arranged by the Irish EU presidency.
In 2003, when asked if there was any figure in popular culture who aroused interest in poetry and lyrics, Heaney praised rap artist Eminem, 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 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)
Heaney suffered a stroke from which he recovered in August 2006, but cancelled all public engagements for several months. Heaney's District and Circle won the 2006 T. S. Eliot Prize. He became artist of honour in Østermarie, Denmark in 2008 and the Seamus Heaney Stræde (street) was named after him. In 2009, Heaney was presented with an Honorary-Life Membership award from the UCD Law Society, in recognition of his remarkable role as a literary figure.Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney by Dennis O'Driscoll was published by Faber & Faber in 2008 and has been described as the nearest thing to an autobiography of the poet. Heaney was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature in 2009. He spoke at the West Belfast Festival 2010 in celebration of his mentor, the poet and novelist Michael MacLaverty, who had helped Heaney to first publish his poetry.
In 2010, he was awarded the Forward Prize for the Best Collection for Human Chain. In October 2010 the collection, a Poetry Book Society Choice, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, to be announced on 24 January, 2011.
Context
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Heaney's work often deals with the local surroundings: that is, his surroundings in Ireland, particularly in Northern Ireland, where he was born. Allusions to sectarian difference, widespread in Northern Ireland, can be found in his poems, but these are never predominant or strident. His poetry is not often overtly political or militant, and is far more concerned with profound observations of the small details of the everyday, far beyond contingent political concerns. Some of his work is concerned with the lessons of history, and indeed prehistory and the very ancient. Other works concern his personal family history, focusing on characters in his family and as he has acknowledged, these poems can be read as elegies for those family members. But primarily, his concern as a poet is with the English language, partly as it is spoken in Ireland but also as spoken elsewhere and in other times; the Anglo-Saxon influences in his work are noteworthy, and his academic studies of that language have had a profound effect on his work. Thanks to Heaney, there has been a minor revival of interest in the verse forms of Anglo-Saxon poetry amongst a number of poets influenced by him. He has also written critically well-regarded essays and two plays. His essays, among other things, have been credited with beginning the critical re-examination of Thomas Hardy. His anthologies (edited with friend Ted Hughes), The Rattle Bag and The School Bag, are used extensively in schools in the U.K. and elsewhere.
Despite the inherently Irish flavour of his language, Heaney is a universal poet. His influence on contemporary poetry is immense. Robert Lowell called him "the most important Irish poet since Yeats." Many others have echoed the sentiment that he is "the greatest poet of our age". His books make up two-thirds of the sales of living poets in the UK.
Political views
Heaney, described by critic Terry Eagleton as "an enlightened cosmopolitan liberal", refused, early on, to be drawn into the violent politics of the Irish 'Troubles'. 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" reject explicit political analysis, favouring the description of people's lives and their voices, drawing out the 'psychic landscape'. His collections often recall the assassination of his family members and close friends, lynchings and bombings. However, as Shaun 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". A desire for peace is intertwined with allusion to the political undercurrents of the Ireland in which Heaney has lived. Colm Tóibín notes, "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” on the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, a poem that commemorates the Irish rebels of 1798. He has 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 partly for political reasons, commenting "I’ve nothing against the Queen personally: I had lunch at the Palace once upon a time". His suggestion is that English patriotism is "off-centre" as a basis for writing authentic poetry. His most commonly cited political statement came in 1982 when he objected to being included in an anthology of British poetry, despite being of Northern Irish birth. He has lived in the Republic of Ireland since 1972 and claimed his Irish rather than British nationality, responding
“Be advised my passport’s green.
No glass of ours was ever raised
to toast the Queen.”
Works
Each year links to its corresponding " in poetry" or " in literature" article:
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: collected editions
- 1980: Selected Poems 1965-1975, Faber & Faber
- 1990: New Selected Poems 1966-1987, Faber & Faber
- 1998: Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996, 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
- 2002: 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, Faber & Faber
- 1999: Diary of One Who Vanished, a song cycle by Leoš Janáček of poems by Ozef Kalda, Faber & Faber
- 2002: Hallaig, Sorley MacLean Trust
- 2002: Arion, a poem by Alexander Pushkin, translated from the Russian, with a note by Olga Carlisle, Arion Press
- 2004: The Testament of Cresseid, Enitharmon Press
- 2004: Columcille The Scribe, The Royal Irish Academy
- 2009: The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables, Faber & Faber
Limited editions and booklets (poetry and prose)
- 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
- 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
- 1997: Poet to Blacksmith, Pim Witteveen
- 1998: Commencement Address, UNC Chapel Hill
- 1998: Audenesque, Maeght
- 1999: The Light of the Leaves, Bonnefant Press
- 2001: Something to Write Home About, Flying Fox
- 2002: Hope and History, Rhodes University
- 2002: Ecologues in Extremis, Royal Irish Academy
- 2002: A Keen for the Coins, Lenoir Rhyne College
- 2003: Squarings, Arion Press
- 2004: Anything can Happen, Town House Publishers
- 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
Critical studies
- 1993: The Poetry of Seamus Heaney ed. by Elmer Andrews, ISBN 0231119267
- 1993: Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet by Michael Parker, ISBN 0333471814
- 1995: Critical essays on Seamus Heaney ed. by Robert F. Garratt, ISBN 0783800045
- 1998: The Poetry of Seamus Heaney: A Critical Study by Neil Corcoran, ISBN 0-571-17747-6
- 2000: Seamus Heaney by Helen Vendler, ISBN 0-674-00205-9, Harvard University Press
- 2003: Seamus Heaney and the Place of Writing by Eugene O'Brien, University Press of Florida, ISBN 0-8130-2582-6
- 2004: Seamus Heaney Searches for Answers by Eugene O'Brien, Pluto Press: London, ISBN 0 7453 1734 0
- 2007: Seamus Heaney and the Emblems of Hope by Karen Marguerite Moloney, ISBN 978-0-8262-1744-8
- 2007: Seamus Heaney: Creating Irelands of the Mind by Eugene O'Brien, Liffey Press, Dublin, ISBN 1-904148-02-6
- 2009: The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney edited by Bernard O'Donoghue
Selected discography
- 2003 The Poet & The Piper - Seamus Heaney & Liam O'Flynn.
- 2009 Collected Poems - Recording of Heaney reading all of his collected poems.
See also
- List of people on stamps of Ireland
- Faber and Faber (Heaney's U.K. publisher)
References
- Heaney, Seamus (1998). Opened Ground. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. . ISBN 0374526788.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|nopp=ignored (|no-pp=suggested) (help) - ^ "Biography of Irish Writer Seamus Heaney". www.seamusheaney.org. 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 near Castledawson, Northern Ireland,...
- "A Note on Seamus Heaney". inform.orbitaltec.ne. Retrieved 2009-04-20.
Seamus Heaney was born on 13 April 1939, the first child of Patrick and Margaret Kathleen Heaney (nee McCann), who then lived on a fifty-acre farm called Mossbawn, in the townland of Tamniarn, County Derry, Northern Ireland.
- Nobel Prize Heaney Biography Accessed 2010-05-23
- Heaney, Seamus : Mid-Term Break
- "Faces of the week". BBC News. 19 January 2007. Retrieved 9 April 2010.
- British Council Biography Accessed 2010-05-23
- ^ Ed. Bernard O’Donoghue The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney (2009) Cambridge University Press pxiii ISBN 978-0-521-54755-0 Accessed 2010-05-23
- 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)
- McLaverty, Michael (2002) Collected short stories Blackstaff Press Ltd pxiii ISBN 0856407275
- British Council biography of Heaney Accessed 2010-04-19
- "Heaney 'catches the heart off guard'". Harvard News Office. Harvard University. October 2, 2008. Retrieved 2010-05-15.
Over the years, readings by poet Seamus Heaney have been so wildly popular that his fans are called "Heaneyboppers."
- "Play Listing". Irish Playography. Irish Theatre Institute. Retrieved 2007-08-24.
- Beowulf: A New Translation
- University of Pennsylvania. Honorary Degree awarded. Accessed 2010-09-19
- Rhodes Department of English Annual Report 2002-2003 from the Rhodes University website
- The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry from the Queen's University Belfast website
- "Emory Acquires Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney Letters". press release. Emory University. September 24, 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."
- Eminem - The Way I Am, autobiography, cover sheet
- "Seamus Heaney praises Eminem". BBC News. 30 June 2003. Retrieved 9 April 2010.
- "Royal Society of Literature All Fellows". Royal Society of Literature. Retrieved 9 August 2010.
- Today Programme, BBC Radio 4, 16 January 2007.
- "Heaney wins TS Eliot poetry prize". BBC News. 15 January 2007.
- University College Dublin announcement of awards.
- Times article Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney. November 14, 2008 Accessed 2010-05-23
- Féile an Phobail, Festival Of the People, 2010 programme. Official website Accessed 2010-07-12
- Guardian article Seamus Heaney deserves a lot more than £40,000 19 March 2009 Accessed 2010-04-19
- BBC News Magazine "Faces of the week", 19 January 2007.
- Login required for this reference. London Review of Books
- ^ Robert Potts (2001-04-07). "The view from Olympia". Guardian.
- Shaun O'Connell (1985-02-01). "Station Island, Seamus Heaney". Boston Review. Retrieved 2010-10-02.
- Colm Tóibín (2010-08-21). "Human Chain by Seamus Heaney - review". Guardian.
- ^ Interview with Seamus Heaney 11 Apr 2009 Daily Telegraph article.
External links
- Heaney's entry at the Princess Grace Irish Library, comprehensively detailed biographical and bibliographical information.
- Biography, Bibliography, including minor works
- Nobel acceptance speech
- Audio discussion of some of his major poems
- www.poetryarchive.org RealPlayer recordings of Heaney reading his own work available.
- Lannan Foundation reading and conversation with Dennis O'Driscoll, 1 October 2003
- LitWeb.net: Seamus Heaney Biography
- Something to Write Home About - Limited Edition publication
- Seamus Heaney reading at the launch of Archipelago magazine in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
- Timeline for Seamus Heaney
- 'The Dissembling Poet: Seamus Heaney and the Avant-garde'
| Works by Seamus Heaney | |||
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| Poetry |
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| Plays | |||
| Essays |
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| Translations | |||
| Recordings | |||
| Beowulf | ||
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| Clans (characters) |  | |
| Translating Beowulf | ||
| Scholars | ||
| Related | ||
- 1939 births
- Living people
- Alumni of Queen's University Belfast
- Aosdána members
- David Cohen Prize recipients
- Dramatists and playwrights from Northern Ireland
- Essayists from Northern Ireland
- Formalist poets
- Harvard University faculty
- Irish translators
- Irish Nobel laureates
- Nobel laureates from Northern Ireland
- Nobel laureates in Literature
- People from County Londonderry
- People of the Year Awards winners
- Poets from Northern Ireland
- Translators from Old English
- Translators from Polish
- Irish people
- Irish poets
- Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature