Seamus Heaney. A Brief Introduction

Seamus Heaney was the son of a farmer whoCounty Derry remained for him the country of the
worked 50 hectares of land and kept cattle. Hismind.He graduated from Queen's University, Belfast, in
mother was an Ulsterwoman who never stopped1961 then trained to become a teacher. While teaching
talking while his father rarely spoke. So, early in life,in a secondary school he married Marie Devlin and
Seamus Heaney found himself stood between speechthey subsequently had three children. His first book
and silence. Soon he learned of other divisions in Irelandentitled Eleven Poems appeared in 1966 and the
and the world, and that greater world landed on thefollowing year he took up a lectureship at Queen's
doorstep in 1943 when Americans built an airfield byBelfast which he held until 1972 - by which time the
the Heaneys' farm. It was a staging post for theTroubles had started in Northern Ireland and Heaney
invasion of Normandy. In 'Making Strange' Heaneymoved to Dublin.The recipient of many literary awards,
recalled this glimpse of otherness as akin to a field ofSeamus Heaney has held the post of Boylston
alien corn and himself as pig in the middle caughtProfessor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard and
between two selves.I stood between themwas appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford
the one with his travelled intelligence1989-1994. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in
and tawny containment,1995. On the death of Ted Hughes in 1998 he was
his speech like the twang of a bowstringand another,offered the Laureateship which he declined. In 1999 he
unshorn and bewilderedrendered the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf into modern
in the tubs of his wellingtons,English in a parallel text edition.Stephen Colbourn has
smiling at me for help,published many articles about literature on
faced with this stranger I'd brought him.The first timeLiterature-study-online at He is a freelance writer. He
away from home came at the age of twelve whenhas written widely on English Language Teaching and
Seamus won a scholarship to a Catholic boardinghas published articles on literature, linguistics, and
school in Derry. Here he learnt Latin and Irish, and wentcomputers in various journals together with many
on to study Anglo-Saxon at university along withReaders for Heinemann and Macmillan Education. He
English Literature. His parents died when he was in hishas contributed articles on literature to The Essentials
teens, leaving nine children to be brought up by uncles.of Literature in English post-1914, published by Hodder
Yet, although he travelled a long way from home, ruralArnold in 2005.