Seamus Heaney (/ˈʃeɪməs ˈhiːni/; born 13 April 1939) is an Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer and recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born at Mossbawn farmhouse between Castledawson and Toomebridge, he now resides in Dublin.
As well as the Nobel Prize in Literature, Heaney has received the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (1968), the E. M. Forster Award (1975), the PEN Translation Prize (1985), the Golden Wreath of Poetry (2001), T. S. Eliot Prize (2006) and two Whitbread Prizes (1996 and 1999). He has been a member of Aosdána since its foundation and has been Saoi since 1997. He was both the Harvard and the Oxford Professor of Poetry and was made a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres in 1996. Heaney's literary papers are held by the National Library of Ireland. On 6 June 2012, he was awarded the Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry.
Robert Lowell called him "the most important Irish poet since Yeats" and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have echoed the sentiment that he is "the greatest poet of our age".
Read more about Seamus Heaney: Early Life, Work, Critical Studies of Heaney, Selected Discography, Major Prizes and Honours
Famous quotes by seamus heaney:
“Dawn-sniffing revenant,
Plodder through midnight rain,
Question me again.”
—Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)
“Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.”
—Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)
“and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles.”
—Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)
“Until, on Vinegar Hill, the fatal conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August the barley grew up out of the grave.”
—Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)
“The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless.”
—Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)