Essays on Seamus Heaney

13 April 1939

30 August 2013

Poet, playwright, translator

• 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)

• Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, 1968
• E. M. Forster Award, 1975
• Nobel Prize in Literature, 1995
• Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres, 1996
• Saoi of Aosdána, 1998
• Golden Wreath of Poetry, 2001
• T. S. Eliot Prize, 2006
• The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry Lifetime
• Recognition Award, 2012

13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013

Seamus Heaney was an Irish poet whose work is notable for its evocation of Irish rural life and events in Irish history as well as for its allusions to Irish myth. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

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)

Heaney wrote eloquently about love, mythology, memory (particularly on his own rural upbringing) and various forms of human relationships. Heaney grew up in Northern Ireland on a farm during a somewhat tumultuous time period, so he also writes a lot about farming, nature, family, war, religion, and his homeland, Ireland.

Heaney developed a completely unique style that subtly refers to all times and places, and in which a fascinating game is played with contradictions and paradoxes. His tone is usually mild and serene, making the existential themes he broaches all the more intense. The most important element of Heaney's poetry is that he is lover of history and feels pleasure in describing it. Many poems of Seamus Heaney revolve around historical prospective of Irish society.

Seamus Heaney was and is still recognised as one of the principal contributors to poetry in Ireland during his lifetime. American poet Robert Lowell described him as "the most important Irish poet since Yeats". Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world".

“If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.”
“Walk on air against your better judgement.”
“Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.”