Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney
Heaney addresses the Law Society (University College Dublin), 2009
Born	13 April 1939 (1939-04-13) (age 71) Bellaghy, Northern Ireland
Occupation	Poet
Period	1966–present
Notable award(s)	Nobel Prize in Literature 1995 T. S. Eliot Prize 2006
Influences Geoffrey Chaucer, Lord Byron, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ted Hughes, Patrick Kavanagh, John Keats, Derek Mahon, Wilfred Owen, Samuel Palmer, William Shakespeare, J.M. Synge, William Wordsworth, William Butler Yeats
Influenced Paul Muldoon, Dennis Nurkse, Giannina Braschi, Medbh McGuckian, Eavan Boland, Owen Sheers

Seamus Heaney (born 13 April 1939, pronounced /ˈʃeɪməs ˈhiːni/) is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2006. He currently lives in Dublin.^[1][2]

Early life

Heaney was born on 13 April 1939 at the family farmhouse called Mossbawn,^[2] between Castledawson and Toomebridge in Northern Ireland; he was the first of nine children. In 1953, his family moved to Bellaghy, a few miles away, which is now the family home. His father, Patrick Heaney, a local of Castledawson, was the eighth child of ten born to James and Sarah Heaney.^[3] Patrick was a farmer but his real commitment was to cattle-dealing, to which he was introduced by the uncles who had cared for him after the early death of his own parents.^[4] Heaney's mother came from the McCann family, whose uncles and relations were employed in the local linen mill and whose aunt had worked as a maid for the mill owner's family. The poet has commented on the fact that his parentage thus contains both the Ireland of the cattle-herding Gaelic past and the Ulster of the Industrial Revolution; he considers this to have been a significant tension in his background.^[4]

Heaney initially attended Anahorish Primary School and when he was twelve-years-old, he won a scholarship to St. Columb's College, a Catholic boarding school situated in Derry. Heaney's brother, Christopher, was killed in a road accident at the age of four (while Heaney was studying at St. Columb's). The poems Mid-Term Break and The Blackbird of Glanmore focus on the death of Christopher. ^[5]

Career

1957-1984

In 1957, Heaney travelled to Belfast to study English Language and Literature at the Queen's University of Belfast. During his time in Belfast he found a copy of Ted Hughes' Lupercal, which spurred him to write poetry. "Suddenly, the matter of contemporary poetry was the material of my own life" he has said.^[6] He graduated in 1961 with a First Class Honours degree. During teacher training at St Joseph's Teacher Training College in Belfast (now merged with St Mary's, University College). Heaney went on a placement to St Thomas' secondary Intermediate School in west Belfast. The headmaster of this school was the writer Michael MacLaverty from County Monaghan, who introduced Heaney to the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh.^[7][8] With McLaverty's mentorship, Heaney first started to publish poetry, beginning in 1962. Hillal describes how McLaverty was like a foster father to the younger Belfast poet. ^[9] In the introduction to McLaverty's Collected works, Heaney summarised the poet's contribution and influence: "His voice was modestly pitched, he never sought the limelight, yet for all that, his place in our literature is secure." ^[10] Heaney's poem Fosterage, in the sequence Singing School from North (1975) is dedicated to him.

In 1963, Heaney became a lecturer at St Joseph's and in the spring of 1963, after contributing various articles to local magazines, he came to the attention of Philip Hobsbaum, then an English lecturer at Queen's University. Hobsbaum was to set up a Belfast Group of local young poets (to mirror the success he had with the London group) and this would bring Heaney into contact with other Belfast poets such as Derek Mahon and Michael Longley. In August 1965 he married Marie Devlin, a school teacher and native of Ardboe, County Tyrone. (Devlin is a writer herself and, in 1994, published Over Nine Waves, 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. In 1967, Faber and Faber published his first major volume, called Death of a Naturalist. This collection met with much critical acclaim and went on to win several awards, the Gregory Award for Young Writers and the Geoffrey Faber Prize.^[8] Also in 1966, he was appointed as a lecturer in Modern English Literature at Queen's University Belfast and his first son, Michael, was born. A second son, Christopher, was born in 1968. That same year, with Michael Longley, Heaney took part in a reading tour called Room to Rhyme, which led to much exposure for the poet's work. In 1969, his second major volume, Door into the Dark, was published.

Seamus Heaney in 1970.

After a spell as guest lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, he returned to Queen's University in 1971. In 1972, Heaney left his lectureship at Belfast and moved to Dublin in the Republic of Ireland, working as a teacher at Carysfort College. In 1972, Wintering Out was published, and over the next few years Heaney began to give readings throughout Ireland, Britain, and the United States. In 1975, Heaney published his fourth volume, North. He became Head of English at Carysfort College in Dublin in 1976. His next volume, Field Work, was published in 1979. Selected Poems 1965-1975 and Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978 were published in 1980. When the Republic of Ireland established Aosdána, the national Irish Arts Council, in 1981, Heaney was among those elected into its first group (he was subsequently elected a Saoi, one of its five elders and its highest honor, in 1997). Also in 1981, he left Carysfort to become visiting professor at Harvard University. He was awarded two honorary doctorates, from Queen's University and from Fordham University in New York City (1982). At the Fordham commencement ceremony in 1982, Heaney delivered the commencement address in a 46-stanza poem entitled Verses for a Fordham Commencement. As he was born and educated in Northern Ireland, Heaney has felt the need to emphasise that he is Irish and not British. For example, he objected to his inclusion in the 1982 Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry by writing: "Be advised, my passport's green / No glass of ours was ever raised / To toast the Queen." ^[11] Following the success of the Field Day Theatre Company's production of Brian Friel's Translations, Heaney joined the company's expanded Board of Directors in 1981, when the company's founders Brian Friel and Stephen Rea decided to make the company a permanent group. In 1984 his mother, Margaret Kathleen Heaney, died.

After 1985

Heaney was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University (formerly Visiting Professor) 1985-1997 and Ralph Waldo Emerson Poet in Residence at Harvard 1998-2006.^[12] In 1989, he was elected Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, which he held for a five-year term to 1994. The chair does not require residence in Oxford, and throughout this period he was dividing his time between Ireland and America. He also continued to give public readings. His father, Patrick, died soon after publication of the 1987 volume, The Haw Lantern. In 1988, a collection of critical essays called The Government of the Tongue was published. In 1986, Heaney received a Litt.D. from Bates College. So well attended and keenly anticipated were these events that those who queued for tickets with such enthusiasm have sometimes been dubbed "Heaneyboppers", suggesting an almost teenybopper fanaticism on the part of his supporters.^[13]

Séamus and Marie Heaney at the Dominican Church, Kraków, Poland, 4 October 1996.

In 1990, The Cure at Troy, a play based on Sophocles' Philoctetes,^[14] was published to much acclaim. In 1991, Seeing Things was published. Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 for what the Nobel committee described as "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past". In 1996, his collection The Spirit Level was published and won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. He repeated that success with the release of Beowulf: A New Translation.^[15] In 1998, Heaney officially opened the library of Saint Catherine's College, Armagh.

In 2002, Heaney was awarded an honorary doctorate from Rhodes University and delivered a public lecture on "The Guttural Muse".^[16]

Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen's University, Belfast.

In 2003, the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry was opened at Queen's University Belfast. It houses the Heaney Media Archive, a record of Heaney's entire oeuvre, along with a full catalogue of his radio and television presentations.^[17] That same year Heaney, decided to lodge a substantial portion of his literary archive at Emory University, as a memorial to the work of William M. Chace, the university’s recently retired president.^[18] He also composed a poem called Beacons of Bealtaine for the 2004 EU Enlargement. The poem was read by Heaney at a ceremony for the twenty-five leaders of the enlarged European Union arranged by the Irish EU presidency.

In 2003, when asked if there was any figure in popular culture who aroused interest in poetry and lyrics, Heaney praised rap artist Eminem, saying "He has created a sense of what is possible. He has sent a voltage around a generation. He has done this not just through his subversive attitude but also his verbal energy."^[19][20] Heaney was named an Honorary Patron of the University Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin and was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (1991) ^[21]

Heaney suffered a stroke from which he recovered in August 2006, but cancelled all public engagements for several months.^[22] Heaney's District and Circle won the 2006 T. S. Eliot Prize.^[23] He became artist of honour in Østermarie, Denmark in 2008 and the Seamus Heaney Stræde (street) was named after him. In 2009, Heaney was presented with an Honorary-Life Membership award from the UCD Law Society, in recognition of his remarkable role as a literary figure. ^[24]Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney by Dennis O'Driscoll was published by Faber & Faber in 2008 and has been described as the nearest thing to an autobiography of the poet. ^[25] Heaney was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature in 2009. He spoke at the West Belfast Festival 2010 in celebration of his mentor, the poet and novelist Michael MacLaverty, who had helped Heaney to first publish his poetry.^[26]

Context

Heaney's work often deals with the local surroundings: that is, his surroundings in Ireland, particularly in Northern Ireland, where he was born. Allusions to sectarian difference, widespread in Northern Ireland, can be found in his poems, but these are never predominant or strident. His poetry is not often overtly political or militant, and is far more concerned with profound observations of the small details of the everyday, far beyond contingent political concerns. Some of his work is concerned with the lessons of history, and indeed prehistory and the very ancient. Other works concern his personal family history, focusing on characters in his family and as he has acknowledged, these poems can be read as elegies for those family members. But primarily, his concern as a poet is with the English language, partly as it is spoken in Ireland but also as spoken elsewhere and in other times; the Anglo-Saxon influences in his work are noteworthy, and his academic studies of that language have had a profound effect on his work. Thanks to Heaney, there has been a minor revival of interest in the verse forms of Anglo-Saxon poetry amongst a number of poets influenced by him. He has also written critically well-regarded essays and two plays. His essays, among other things, have been credited with beginning the critical re-examination of Thomas Hardy. His anthologies (edited with friend Ted Hughes), The Rattle Bag and The School Bag, are used extensively in schools in the U.K. and elsewhere.

Despite the inherently Irish flavour of his language, Heaney is a universal poet. His influence on contemporary poetry is immense. Robert Lowell called him "the most important Irish poet since Yeats." Many others have echoed the sentiment that he is "the greatest poet of our age".^[27] His books make up two-thirds of the sales of living poets in the UK.^[28]

Political view

Many of Heaney's poems contain an underlying implication of Heaney's political views. In Requiem for the Croppies Heaney says, the ‘barley grew up out of the grave' and in doing so reflects on how little nationalists in Ulster appreciate the martyrs who died for the cause. In the poems throughout his collection Wintering Out, Heaney embellishes this, particularly in Gifts of Rain. At first read the poem regards a simple river akin to the poem Broagh. However, in the line ‘I cock my ear / at an absence', Heaney refers to those who have died and have worked to unite Ireland without violence. He asks for help to go back in time to hear advice from those who have made a difference in uniting Ireland: ‘Soft voices of the dead are whispering by the shore'. The use of water as the central imagery throughout the poem, reflects the nature of being purged, coming out clean with a fresh beginning. Heaney's ability to be ‘firmly rooted in reality' is most clearly shown in each poem through his ability to connect everyday landscapes (such as the River Moyola) to the political situation in Ireland.

Bibliography

Limited editions and booklets (poetry and prose)

About Heaney and his work

• 1993: The Poetry of Seamus Heaney ed. by Elmer Andrews, ISBN 0-231-11926-7
• 1993: Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet by Michael Parker, ISBN 0-333-47181-4
• 1995: Critical essays on Seamus Heaney ed. by Robert F. Garratt, ISBN 0-7838-0004-5
• 1998: The Poetry of Seamus Heaney: A Critical Study by Neil Corcoran, ISBN 0-571-17747-6
• 2000: Seamus Heaney by Helen Vendler, ISBN 0-674-00205-9, Harvard University Press
• 2007: Seamus Heaney and the Emblems of Hope by Karen Marguerite Moloney, ISBN 978-0-8262-1744-8
• 2009: The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney edited by Bernard O'Donoghue

Discography

• 2003 The Poet & The Piper - Seamus Heaney & Liam O'Flynn.
• 2009 Collected Poems - Recording of Heaney reading all of his collected poems.

See also

• List of people on stamps of Ireland
• Faber and Faber (Heaney's U.K. publisher)
• 2007: Seamus Heaney: Creating Irelands of the Mind by Eugene O'Brien, Liffey Press, Dublin, ISBN 1-904148-02-6
• 2004: Seamus Heaney Searches for Answers by Eugene O'Brien, Pluto Press: London, ISBN 0 7453 1734 0
• 2003: Seamus Heaney and the Place of Writing by Eugene O'Brien, University Press of Florida, ISBN 0-8130-2582-6

References

External links

• Heaney's entry at the Princess Grace Irish Library, comprehensively detailed biographical and bibliographical information.
• Biography, Bibliography, including minor works
• Nobel acceptance speech
• Audio discussion of some of his major poems
• www.poetryarchive.org RealPlayer recordings of Heaney reading his own work available.
• Lannan Foundation reading and conversation with Dennis O'Driscoll, 1 October 2003
• LitWeb.net: Seamus Heaney Biography
• Something to Write Home About - Limited Edition publication
• Seamus Heaney reading at the launch of Archipelago magazine in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
• Timeline for Seamus Heaney
• 'The Dissembling Poet: Seamus Heaney and the Avant-garde'

Beowulf Characters Beowulf  · Grendel  · Grendel's mother  · Hroðgar  · Ecgþeow · Hygelac  · Heardred  · Æschere  · Onela  · Wealhþeow  · Wiglaf  · Unferð  · The Dragon Scholars and translators M. H. Abrams  · Michael J. Alexander  · Nora Kershaw Chadwick  · Kevin Crossley-Holland  · Michael D. C. Drout  · Seamus Heaney  · William Morris  · Frederick Klaeber  · Burton Raffel  · J. R. R. Tolkien  · Charles Leslie Wrenn Artistic depictions Literature Grendel · Eaters of the Dead · The Legacy of Heorot · Beowulf's Children · Beyond Beowulf Film Grendel Grendel Grendel · Beowulf (1999) · The 13th Warrior · Beowulf & Grendel · Wrath of Gods · Grendel · Beowulf (2007) Other "The Monsters and the Critics"  · Heorot  · Hrunting  · Nægling  · Nowell Codex