Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Justin Heaney, MRIAwas an Irish poet, playwright, translator and lecturer, and the recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth13 April 1939
CityCastledawson, Northern Ireland
CountryIreland
Seamus Heaney quotes about
hardy suppose thomas
I suppose you could say my father's world was Thomas Hardy and my mother's D.H. Lawrence.
censure considers flourish itself qualified rhetoric vigilance
No place in the world prides itself more on its vigilance and realism, no place considers itself more qualified to censure any flourish of rhetoric or extravagance of aspiration.
associated full life reflects
I think that water is immediately interesting. It's just, as an element, it is full of life. It is associated with origin; it is bright - it reflects you.
faking
The faking of feelings is a sin against the imagination.
poetry refusal
The experimental poetry thing is not my thing. It's a programme of the avant-garde: basically a refusal of the kind of poetry I write.
generally
I think childhood is, generally speaking, a preparation for disappointment.
allowed education ireland northern schools secondary students won
I would say that something important for me and for my generation in Northern Ireland was the 1947 Education Act, which allowed students who won scholarships to go on to secondary schools and thence to university.
hope ifs
Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.
mysterious wonder poetry-is
Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.
issues space political
On the contrary, a trust in the staying power and travel-worthiness of such good should encourage us to credit the possibility of a world where respect for the validity of every tradition will issue in the creation and maintenance of a salubrious political space.
effort community plies
The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.
strange huge
Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.
wetness might centre
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage. The wet centre is bottomless.
lyric-poetry facts truthfulness
In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.