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SEAMUS HEANEY BIOGRAPHY |
The Nobel Prize Winner in Literature (1995)
One of the great Irish poets, Seamus Heaney was born on April 13, 1939. He grew up on a farm in Castledawson, County Derry, Northern Ireland with his 8 younger brothers and sisters. His father, Patrick Heaney was a very committed cattle dealer, and his mother on the other hand was the complete opposite. Heaney’s mother Margaret Kathleen was far more into the modern world then the traditional rural economy. It’s said that his mother was a heavy talker while his father was very soft spoken and mainly kept to himself. This difference has led his readers to believe that some of his poetry themes are based on this. Samuel Heaney attended a local primary school close to the farm, and at the age of twelve he won a scholarship to St. Joseph’s College which was a Catholic boarding school. He later transferred from Castledawson to Belfast, and then Belfast to the Irish Republic. All of his moves were very rough and straining on himself while growing up, and most of the strains and difficulties can be found in his poems, for example, “Digging”. At St. Joseph’s College Seamus Heaney learned both Latin and Irish which became determining factors in many of his developments and abatements in poetry. In 1963 he took a teaching position at St Joseph’s as a lecturer for English. He also took on the job of writing and publishing work in the University’s magazine, and joined a poetry workshop. The year 1965 came around and Heaney published “Eleven Poems” along with “Death of a Naturalist” which earned him the E.C Gregory Award, the Cholmondeley Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Seamus Heaney also had many other achievements and awards that he received including the Poetry Book Society Choice of the year for “Door into the Dark”. A big inspiration entered Seamus Heaney’s life as well. He married a woman by the name of Marie Devlin who also had a very large family that was very interested in poetry and writing. Marie has been central to Heaney’s life, appearing in numerous poems that he had written.
In 1971 Heaney moved back to Northern Ireland, and in 1972 he resigned from his lectureship and moved to Glanmore, in County Wicklow where he wrote and published “Wintering Out”. 1973 was another magnificent year for this Irish poet because he received the Denis Devlin Award and the Writer in Residence Award from the American Irish Foundation. In 1975 “North” was published and Heaney won various other awards for it. Seamus Heaney was later asked to teach at Carysfort College in Dublin where he was promoted to Department Head and published many poems throughout the years. In 1981 he gave up his position at Carysfort College to work as a visiting professor for Harvard. Heaney’s mother passed away a few years later which inspired him greatly to create a memorial sonnet for her known as “The Haw Lantern”. He later wrote “Seeing Things” which contains many poems about his father. It can definitely be seen that Seamus Heaney is a poet that writes mainly about his life growing up and his difficulties and losses of people he has loved involved in it. His poems also, involve a lot of death and afterlife that carries a mixture of fear and freedom.
In the recent years, Seamus Heaney has received a number of honorary degrees, and he is now a member of Aosdana which is and Irish academy of artists and writers. The biggest of all of his awards is that he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. Just recently, Heaney translated “Beowulf” which a number of people thoroughly enjoyed, and he was awarded the Whitbread Prize. He also published “Diary of One Who Vanished” which has been staged by the English National Opera in London, Dublin, Paris, Munich, Amsterdam and New York. Seamus Heaney is still alive today and he has no intention of slowing down with his work. I hope to see some new "masterpieces" in the very near future!
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Ha! This is hilarious!
