Seamus HeaneyArticle Free Pass Seamus Heaney, in full Seamus
Justin Heaney (born April 13, 1939, near Castledàwson, County
Londonderry, N.Ire.), Irish poet whose work is notable for its
evocation of Irish rural life and events in Irish history as
well as for its allusions to Irish myth. He received the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1995. After graduating from Queen’s
University, Belfast (B.A., 1961), Heaney taught secondary school
for a year and then lectured in colleges and universities in
Belfast and Dublin. He became a member of the Field Day Theatre
Company in 1980, soon after its founding by playwright Brian
Friel and actor Stephen Rea. In 1982 he joined the faculty of
Harvard University as visiting professor and, in 1985, became
full professor—a post he retained while teaching at the
University of Oxford (1989–94). Heaney’s first poetry collection
was the prizewinning Death of a Naturalist (1966). In this book
and Door into the Dark (1969), he wrote in a traditional style
about a passing way of life—tha