Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

MRIA
Heaney in 1982
Heaney in 1982
Born(1939-04-13)13 April 1939
Tamniaran, near Castledawson, Northern Ireland
Died30 August 2013(2013-08-30) (aged 74)
Blackrock, Dublin, Ireland
Resting placeSt. Mary's Church, Bellaghy, Northern Ireland
Occupation
  • Poet
  • playwright
  • translator
Alma materQueen's University Belfast
Period1966–2013
Notable works
List of notable works
Spouse
Marie Devlin
​
(m. 1965)​
[1][2]
Children3

Seamus Justin Heaney MRIA (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is Death of a Naturalist (1966), his first major published volume. American poet Robert Lowell described him as "the most important Irish poet since Yeats", and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have said that he was "the greatest poet of our age".[3][4] Robert Pinsky has stated that "with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller."[5] Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world".[6]

Heaney was born in the townland of Tamniaran between Castledawson and Toomebridge, Northern Ireland. His family moved to nearby Bellaghy when he was a boy. He became a lecturer at St. Joseph's College in Belfast in the early 1960s, after attending Queen's University and began to publish poetry. He lived in Sandymount, Dublin, from 1976 until his death.[7] He lived part-time in the United States from 1981 to 2006. He was a professor at Harvard from 1981 to 1997, and their Poet in Residence from 1988 to 2006. From 1989 to 1994, he was also the Professor of Poetry at Oxford. In 1996 he was made a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and in 1998 was bestowed the title Saoi of Aosdána. He received numerous prestigious awards.

Heaney is buried at St. Mary's Church, Bellaghy, Northern Ireland. The headstone bears the epitaph "Walk on air against your better judgement", from his poem "The Gravel Walks".[8]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference times-obit was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Corcoran, Neil (30 August 2013). "Seamus Heaney obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 November 2023.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference bbc_faces_of_the_week was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Sutherland, John (19 March 2009). "Seamus Heaney deserves a lot more than £40,000". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 April 2010.
  5. ^ Pinsky, Robert. The Eco Press, Hopewell ISBN 0-88001-217-X
  6. ^ Craig, Patricia (30 August 2013). "Seamus Heaney obituary: Nobel Prize-winning Irish Poet". The Independent. Retrieved 30 August 2013.
  7. ^ Heaney, Seamus (1998). Opened Ground. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-52678-8.
  8. ^ "Seamus Heaney: Headstone for poet's grave unveiled". BBC News. 14 August 2015. Retrieved 12 April 2019.