Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Justin Heaney, MRIAwas an Irish poet, playwright, translator and lecturer, and the recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth13 April 1939
CityCastledawson, Northern Ireland
CountryIreland
appetite canada home readings stamina time
I don't do as many readings as I used to. There was a time when I was on the road a lot more, at home in Ireland, in Britain, in Canada and the States, a time when I had more stamina and appetite for it.
achieves admire corners cut emotional great lyric poetry refuses tom
Tom Sleigh's poetry is hard-earned and well founded. I great admire the way it refuses to cut emotional corners and yet achieves a sense of lyric absolution.
archaic associate belonged creature entirely family gaelic home houses rural side
My father was a creature of the archaic world, really. He would have been entirely at home in a Gaelic hill-fort. His side of the family, and the houses I associate with his side of the family, belonged to a traditional rural Ireland.
The poet is on the side of undeceiving the world.
poetry
Poetry is more a threshold than a path.
equals experience last lecture prose stuff
My experience is that prose usually equals duty - last minute, overdue-deadline stuff or a panic lecture to be written.
poems
It's difficult to learn poems off by heart that don't rhyme.
poetry promote
In Northern Ireland, helicopters are not usually used to promote poetry.
poetry
In a way, Anglo-Saxon poetry cannot be translated.
came career farming
I came from a farming background, and my career was teaching.
history hope side
History says, 'Don't hope on this side of the grave.'
anybody hard knows poetry worthwhile
Anybody serious about poetry knows how hard it is to achieve anything worthwhile in it.
Your temperament is what you write with, but it's also how you deal with the world.
since
Since I was a schoolboy, I've been used to being recognized on the road by old and young, and being bantered with and, indeed, being taunted.