One of the first assignments for the trip was to research anything related to the trip-overall, the side-trips or anything related to the culture. Because I am an English Literature major, I choose to focus my paper on the Irish poet, Seamus Heaney. Everything you could ever want to know about Seamus Heaney’s poetic mastery can be found below!
The Life and Poetry of Seamus Heaney
There have been many influential writers throughout the years. When asked to name a famous author, most people start listing off names like, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and even Oscar Wilde. Generally, people link the classic novels and poetry to people from a different time. However, some of the most impactful writers, like T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, or Sylvia Plath were born in the 20th century. The greatest writers connect their readers to their life experiences and offer them an insight into lessons learned. One such author is Seamus Heaney, an Irish poet and professor.
While there are many parts of Heaney’s life are unusual and exciting, he started out just like any other person. Born Seamus Justin Heaney, Seamus Heaney was born in April 1939, in County Derry, Northern Ireland. Seamus attended a local Anahorish school, then boarded at St. Columb’s College in Derry. From there, Heaney would attend Queen’s College in Belfast, where he would graduate with honors and a degree in English language and literature (Foster, XI).
After graduating from Queen’s College, Seamus Heaney would go on to receive his Teacher’s Training Diploma instead of pursuing a master’s degree. Heaney takes different teaching positions at various institutions, like St. Thomas’s Intermediate School and St. Joseph’s College of Education.
While teaching, Heaney would meet and marry his wife Marie Devlin, with whom he would have three children (Vendler, XII).
After several years of teaching and after the birth of two of his children, Michael and Christopher, Seamus Heaney would begin to publish books of poetry, the first of which is entitled Death of a Naturalist. Heaney also spent a large amount of his time abroad, including a stint as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley (Vendler, XIII).
In the year 1971, Seamus Heaney’s life would begin to change. Instead of simply being a professor and a poet, Heaney would be plagued by social issues and injustice, especially at the hands of the Provisional IRA and the Catholic Church of Ireland. Historically referred to as the “Bloody Sunday riots,” the attack on thirteen unarmed civil rights marchers by the British troops lead to distress in Northern Ireland. As a result of the conflict, Seamus Heaney and his family move from Northern Ireland to a cottage near Ashford, County Wicklow (Foster, XII). When interviewed, Heaney attributed the outbreak in violence and his family’s economic circumstances as the reasons behind the move to the South (Parker, 117-119).
After leaving Northern Ireland, Seamus Heaney would never reside there again, instead living in various homes in and around Dublin, Ireland. Once Heaney left Northern Ireland, he began to publish more poetry, with books that include Wintering Out, North, Field Work, Station Island, Haw Lantern, Seeing Things, and The Spirit Level. Seamus Heaney also held various teaching positions. In 1975, Heaney would be named head of the department at Carysfort Teacher Training College. Continuing in his travels, Heaney would hold a one-term traveling teaching positions at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Vendler, XIV).
For the next five-years, Heaney would hold a professorship at Harvard University. He would continue to write, being influenced by the events that happen in Northern Ireland and the events that take place in his personal life. Both his mother and father die, and Heaney commemorates their deaths in separate poems. After the five-year term at Harvard University, Seamus Heaney would take a position as Professor of Poetry at Oxford, giving three public lectures a year (Vendler, XV).
In 1995, Heaney would receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm, Sweden (Nobel Prize, 1). Heaney also won the T.S. Eliot Prize for District and Circle, in 2006. The T.S. Eliot Prize is referred to as the most prestigious award in the U.K. (Poetry Foundation, 1). Towards the end of his life, Seamus Heaney focused on translating and interpreting various works. Heaney’s work would continue to be praised and Heaney would receive various awards up until his death in 2013.
At the age of 70, Seamus Heaney and his work were honored as Ireland marked the occasion with a 12-hour broadcast of archived Heaney recordings (Poetry Foundation, 1). In the last four years of his life, Seamus Heaney was recorded as one of the most popular modern authors in the U.K. On 30 August 2013, Seamus Heaney died in Dublin, Ireland. He was 74 years old (Nobel Prize, 1).
When looking at the influences of Heaney’s poetry, many scholars trace the content to Heaney’s Northern Irish heritage. While Heaney did leave the rural life that he grew up with, he never forgot it. In his book Poetry and Peace, Richard Russell states that “many of Heaney’s early poems celebrate the declining rural crafts of his native Ulster as part of his poetic function as folklorist and anthropologist” (Russell, 177). The themes and tones of Heaney’s early works, such as “Digging,” reflect the more rural life-style that Heaney grew up living.
Heaney was also heavily influenced by his family. For instance, the poem “Mid-Term Break” was written about Heaney’s younger brother Christopher, who tragically died in an accident when Heaney was younger (Foster, 3). Similarly, after the deaths of his mother and father, Heaney wrote the poems “Clearances” and “The Stone Verdict” respectively (Parker, 211). Often this devastating time of loss has been characterized as some of Heaney’s most creative and massively successful.
There have been two other influences on Heaney’s poetry that scholars have traced. The first, and probably most prevalent, is the impact of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Because Seamus Heaney identifies himself by his Northern Irish roots, the constant conflict and eventual peace in the region drove Heaney’s poetry. For instance, in the classic Heaney poems, entitled “Casualty” and “Station Island,” Heaney describes traumatic events that occurred due to the aggression of the Provisional IRA (Parker, 153-154).
The other highly influential moment in Seamus Heaney’s life was the discovery of another author’s work, the book The Bog People by P.V. Glob. Heaney first read the book in 1969, but it was not until 1973 that Heaney would actually travel to Denmark to view P.V. Glob’s inspiration for the book (Foster, XII). The bog people, or people captured and preserved in the bogs, are described in both The Bog People and several of Heaney’s poems like “The Tollund Man” and “The Grauballe Man” (Foster, 49). Heaney would continue to hold a fascination with these bog people, and visit the site in Denmark several times in his life.
Another important aspect of Heaney’s life was his relationships with other authors and poets. While he was studying at Queen’s College in Belfast, Heaney became a member of the “Belfast Group,” which was devoted to helping the member’s individual literary development” (Parker, 51). Heaney got acquainted with names such as Harry Chambers, Stewart Parker, and Hugh Bredin (Parker, 52).
Like all authors, Heaney has often stated that he has been influenced and inspired by his predecessors. In his formative years, Heaney was influenced and mentored by people like “R.S. Thomas, Norman MacCaig, and Ted Hughes, because they were ‘delineators of a rural parish,” just like Seamus Heaney (Parker, 42). While at Oxford, three influential figures, “Terry Flanagan, Marie Devlin, and Philip Hobsbaum” entered Heaney’s life (Parker, 46). Through their support and guidance, Heaney was able to produce some of his greatest works. Consequently, the same Marie Devlin would later become Seamus Heaney’s wife.
Interestingly, many people have interview Heaney and tried to delve into his drive and creative process. Heaney wrote so many different poems and books of poetry, that people question where he comes up with the material and the desire to continue writing. In a 1978 lecture, Heaney identified the two contributory elements to poetry. The first element in “the literary, articulated tradition in which the poet writes,” and the second element is “the illiterate, subconscious well of his mind” (Russell, 171). By melding these two parts together, people can begin to understand where the focus of each poem comes from. According to Heaney, “filtering out the conflict in Northern Ireland,” is usually where his literate and illiterate come together (Russell, 172).
A summary of how Heaney’s poetic process comes about is best put by Russell, stating that Heaney’s writing came about because of “the ‘technique’ or the inner reflective process out of which words and images can then be made, and the ‘craft’ or the actual making of the poetry” (Russell, 169).
Throughout his life, Seamus Heaney drew inspiration from his surroundings. Whether he was heading into what he called “exile,” or simply mourning the loss of a family member, Heaney turned his life into countless pieces of poetry. While Heaney amassed numerous awards and recognitions over the years, he is best characterized by his life-long love of English and the construction of poetry.
References
Foster, Thomas C. Seamus Heaney. Dublin: O’Brien, 1989. Print.
Parker, Michael. “Chapter 2: Affinities, 1961-66; Chapter 2: Pioneer, 1966-69; Chapter 4: Exposure, 1969-1975.” Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet. Iowa City: U of Iowa, 28+. Print.
Russell, Richard Rankin. “Chapter 5: “To Make Myself an Echo Chamber” Seamus Heaney’s Auditory Imagination; Coda: Poetry and the Northern Irish Peace Process.” Poetry & Peace Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, and Northern Ireland. Notre Dame (Ind.): U of Notre Dame, 2010. 167+. Print.
“Seamus Heaney.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 15 May 2017. <https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/seamus-heaney>
“Seamus Heaney – Biographical”. Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 15 May 2017. <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1995/heaney-bio.html>
Vendler, Helen. “4: Alterities and Alter Egos: From ‘Death of a Naturalist’ to ‘Station Island’.”
Seamus Heaney. Cambridge: Harvard U, 1998. 78+. Print.
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Read along with Shannon at https://shannonsdublintrip.wordpress.com/
Learn more about the U of A Faculty-Led: Education Abroad: Ireland at https://studyabroad.uark.edu/eduireland
