North

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Kirkland, Richard, Literature and Culture in Northern Ireland since 1965: Moments of Danger, Longman (London, England), 1996.

Hederman, ‘“The Crane Bag” and The North of Ireland’, The Crane Bag 4:2 (1980), 98–9. Quotation from a letter of his to Conor Cruise O’Brien, which continues: ‘Your desire to demythicise us is, perhaps, an impossibility, and one which can only serve to drive the “reality” even more deeply and dangerously underground.’ Independent on Sunday (London, England), April 6, 1997, p. 29; July 20, 1997, p. 32; November 9, 1997, p. 38; September 6, 1998, p. 10; March 21, 1999, p. 9; April 4, 1999, p. 11; October 10, 1999, p. 10; April 8, 2001, p. 46. Incertus, the pen name Heaney gave himself in the early Belfast days of poetry writing never really goes away. The poet has come to seek release from a build-up of inner tensions, be they generated by the depressing state of Northern Ireland or his nagging uncertainty about the way his poetry is presenting. To help him cope with troubling issues Heaney has felt the need for solitude in which to receive the benefit and reassurance of a counselling voice. Craig, Patricia (30 August 2013). "Seamus Heaney obituary: Nobel Prize-winning Irish Poet". The Independent. Independent Print Limited . Retrieved 30 August 2013. Scott, Jamie S., and Paul Simpson-Housley, editors, Mapping the Sacred: Religion, Geography, and Postcolonial Literatures, Rodopi (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 2001.He was concerned, as a poet and a translator, with the English language as it is spoken in Ireland but also as spoken elsewhere and in other times; he explored Anglo-Saxon influences in his work and study. Critic W. S. Di Piero noted Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland), February 22, 2003, p. 61; April 12, 2003, p. 62; July 5, 2003, p. 57; July 12, 2003, p. 59; July 19, 2003, p. 55; August 2, 2003, p. 59; October 25, 2003, p. 55. Heaney offers us a hidden invitation to gauge the lengths to which he runs his hands and his mind over the tissue and texture of his subject-matter, to measure the extent to which he prods and probes in pursuit of poetic truth and to consider the place of history and scholarship in what he does. Christian Science Monitor, April 22, 1999, Elizabeth Lund, "The Enticing Sounds of This Irishman's Verse," p. 20; February 3, 2000, "' Harry Potter' Falls to a Medieval Slayer," p. 1; April 13, 2000, p. 15; April 26, 2001, p. 19. Deane, Seamus, Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1790, Clarendon Press (Oxford, England), 1997.

Alongside his friend Ted Hughes ( No 4 in this series), Seamus Heaney was among the finest late-20th century poets writing in the English language. Heaney’s greatness was cultural as well as lyrical: he saw it as his inescapable duty to attempt a mood of reconciliation among his community. His work, rooted in his native Ireland, always had to navigate the murderous vicissitudes of the Troubles, the civil war that traumatised Northern Ireland for 30 terrible years, from the civil rights march of October 1968 to the Good Friday agreement of April 1998. Heaney met Marie Devlin, a native of Ardboe, County Tyrone, while at St Joseph's in 1962; they married in August 1965. [15] [19] A school teacher and writer, Devlin published Over Nine Waves (1994), a collection of traditional Irish myths and legends. Heaney's first book, Eleven Poems, was published in November 1965 for the Queen's University Festival. [26] In 1966 their first son, Michael, was born. He earned a living at the time by writing for The Irish Times, often on the subject of radio. [27] A second son, Christopher, was born in 1968. La prima lettura non è facile, per la scelta dei termini e delle immagini. E tutto sommato anche le poesie più celebrate non mi catturano quanto alcune del precedente Door into the Dark. Rereading North, more than 40 years on, in the 21st century, it’s surprising to discover how raw and unguarded some of its emotions turn out to be. In North, an early collection, Heaney is not as diplomatic as he would later become, especially after winning the Nobel prize in 1995. In Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, he notes with dread the fearsome “eructation of Orange drums”, and describes the “crater of fresh clay” left by a roadside bomb, and the “machine-gun posts” set up by the British army. This, he says, is “our little destiny”.

In November 2019 the documentary Seamus Heaney and the music of what happens was aired on BBC Two. His wife Marie and his children talked about their family life and read some of the poems he wrote for them. For the first time, Heaney's four brothers remembered their childhood and the shared experiences that inspired many of his finest poems. [118] from " Joy Or Night: Last Things in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats and Philip Larkin", W. D. Thomas Memorial Lecture delivered by Seamus Heaney at University College of Swansea on 18 January 1993. Naturalism [ edit ] Ciarán O'Rourke (10 October 2020). "Did Seamus Heaney Write Political Poems?". Independent Left (Ireland). Wills, Clair, Improprieties: Politics and Sexuality in Northern Irish Poetry, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1993. O'Brien, Eugene, Seamus Heaney: Creating Ireland of the Mind, Liffey Press (Dublin, Ireland), 2003.

New York Times, April 22, 1979; January 11, 1985; November 24, 1998, Michiko Kakutani, review of Opened Ground; January 30, 1999, p. B11; January 20, 2000, Sarah Lyall, "Wizard vs. Dragon: A Close Contest, but the Fire-Breather Wins," p. A17; January 27, 2000, p. A27; February 22, 2000, Richard Eder, "Beowulf and Fate Meet in a Modern Poet's Lens," p. B8; March 20, 2000, Mel Gussow, "An Anglo-Saxon Chiller (with an Irish Touch)," p. B1; February 1, 2001, pB3, E3; April 20, 2001, p. B37, E39; May 27, 2001, p. AR19; June 2, 2001, p. A15, B9; September 30, 2002, p. B3, E3. In September 2010 Faber published Human Chain, Heaney's twelfth collection. Human Chain was awarded the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection, one of the major poetry prizes Heaney had never previously won, despite having been twice shortlisted. [70] [71] The book, published 44 years after the poet's first, was inspired in part by Heaney's stroke in 2006, which left him "babyish" and "on the brink". Poet and Forward judge Ruth Padel described the work as "a collection of painful, honest and delicately weighted poems ... a wonderful and humane achievement." [70] Writer Colm Tóibín described Human Chain as "his best single volume for many years, and one that contains some of the best poems he has written... is a book of shades and memories, of things whispered, of journeys into the underworld, of elegies and translations, of echoes and silences." [72] In October 2010, the collection was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 5, 1976, Volume 7, 1977, Volume 14, 1980, Volume 25, 1983, Volume 37, 1986, Volume 74, 1993, Volume 91, 1996.

Heaney's first translation was of the Irish lyric poem Buile Suibhne, published as Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish (1984). He took up this character and connection in poems published in Station Island (1984). Heaney's prize-winning translation of Beowulf (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000, Whitbread Book of the Year Award) was considered groundbreaking in its use of modern language melded with the original Anglo-Saxon "music". [104] Plays and prose [ edit ]In September 2015 it was announced that Heaney's family would posthumously publish his translation of Book VI of The Aeneid in 2016. [81] Death [ edit ] Heaney's grave Heaney was compiling a collection of his work in anticipation of Selected Poems 1988–2013 at the time of his death. The selection includes poems and writings from Seeing Things, The Spirit Level, the translation of Beowulf, Electric Light, District and Circle, and Human Chain (fall 2014). In February 2014 Emory University premiered Seamus Heaney: The Music of What Happens, the first major exhibition to celebrate the life and work of Seamus Heaney since his death.