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.
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.
art domestic home itself poetry
Poetry is a domestic art, most itself when most at home.
country mean home
Not to Learn Irish is to miss the opportunity of understanding what life in this country has meant and could mean in a better future. It is to cut oneself off from ways of being at home. If we regard self-understanding, mutual understanding, imaginative enhancement, cultural diversity and a tolerant political atmosphereas a desirable attainments, we should remember that a knowledge of the Irish language is an essential element in their realisation.
attitude home figure-skating
At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure.
hardy suppose thomas
I suppose you could say my father's world was Thomas Hardy and my mother's D.H. Lawrence.
conferred fact musically order poet quite repose satisfying seeking speaker stability strain towards uttered
But the thing uttered by the speaker I strain towards is still not quite the story of what is going on; it is more reflexive than that, because as a poet I am in fact straining towards a strain, seeking repose in the stability conferred by a musically satisfying order of sounds.
censure considers flourish itself qualified rhetoric vigilance
No place in the world prides itself more on its vigilance and realism, no place considers itself more qualified to censure any flourish of rhetoric or extravagance of aspiration.
art born brought devoted earnest experience ireland lived northern past quarter though towards
This temperamental disposition towards an art that was earnest and devoted to things as they are was corroborated by the experience of having been born and brought up in Northern Ireland and of having lived with that place even though I have lived out of it for the past quarter of a century.
advised glass ours raised surprised toast
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.
beings both conduct envisage exposure human inner moment reminder scary
It was like a moment of exposure to interstellar cold, a reminder of the scary element, both inner and outer, in which human beings must envisage and conduct their lives.
time
The wartime, in other words, was pre-reflective time for me. Pre-literate too. Pre-historical in its way.
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One of the best descriptions of the type of writer I am was given by Tom Paulin, who described himself as a 'binge' writer - like a binge drinker. I go on binges.
changed electric hopkins intensity liked
I think the first little jolt I got was reading Gerard Manley Hopkins - I liked other poems... but Hopkins was kind of electric for me - he changed the rules with speech, and the whole intensity of the language was there and so on.