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)
“We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening—
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encroaching horizon,
Is wooed into the cyclops’ eye
Of a tarn.”
—Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)
“He sits, strong and blunt as a Celtic cross,
Clearly used to silence and an armchair:
Tonight the wife and children will be quiet
At slammed door and smoker’s cough in the hall.”
—Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)
“Little adulteress,
before they punished you
you were flaxen-haired,
undernourished, and your
tar-black face was beautiful.”
—Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)
“An astounding crate full of air.”
—Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)