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
gains glory dies
I shall gain glory or die.
world news terror
But even so, none of the news of these world-spasms entered me as terror.
wise variation world
Yet there are times when a deeper need enters, when we want the poem to be not only pleasurably right but compellingly wise, not only a surprising variation played upon the world, but a re-tuning of the world itself.
father lines tides
The dotted line my father's ashplant made On Sandymount Strand Is something else the tide won't wash away.
world reliability stood-up
To begin with, I wanted that truth to life to possess a concrete reliability, and rejoiced most when the poem seemed most direct, an upfront representation of the world it stood in for or stood up for or stood its ground against.
reality long minorities
The external reality and inner dynamic of happenings in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1974 were symptomatic of change, violent change admittedly, but change nevertheless, and for the minority living there, change had been long overdue.
jobs defiance
I suppose I'm saying that defiance is actually part of the lyric job
men
Wherever that man went, he went gratefully.
distance taken self
If self is a location, so is love: Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points, Options, obstinacies, dug heels, and distance, Here and there and now and then, a stance.
beam moors mist
In off the moors, down through the mist beams, god-cursed Grendel came greedily loping.
people behaviour path
Behaviour that's admired is the path to power among people everywhere.
strong tree heaven
No bit of the natural world is more valuable or more vulnerable than the tree bit. Nothing is more like ourselves, standing upright, caught between heaven and earth, frail at the extremities, yet strong at the central trunk, and nothing is closer to us at the beginning and at the end, providing the timber boards that frame both the cradle and the coffin.
scotland speech speak
My point is there's a hidden Scotland in anyone who speaks the Northern Ireland speech. It's a terrific complicating factor, not just in Northern Ireland, but Ireland generally.
lyric-poetry facts truthfulness
In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.