National Poetry Month: My Favorite Poet- Seamus Heaney

Heaney was born at the family farm called Mossbawn in the Townland of Tamniarn near Castledawson, Northern Ireland, about thirty miles north-west of Belfast and two miles north-east of Magherafelt. This was on April 13, 1939. He was educated at Anahorish Primary School and St. Columb's College. In 1957, Heaney travelled to Belfast to study English Language and Literature at Queen's University of Belfast. It was during his student years there that he began to write and publish, first under the nom-de-plume "Incertus" and later under his legal name. He then completed his teacher training at St Joseph's Teacher Training College in Belfast. His first teaching post was at St Thomas' Secondary Intermediate School in Ballymurphy, West Belfast. In August 1965 he married Marie Devlin, a school teacher who was originally from Ardboe, County Tyrone. She is also a writer and poet. Heaney's first full-length collection "Death of a Naturalist" was published in the Spring of 1966 by Faber and Faber. During this same year, he was appointed as a lecturer in Modern English Literature at Queen's University Belfast and began having children. Soon thereafter the Troubles began with Belfast as the epicenter. Still, Heaney and the other Northern Irish poets continued writing. In 1969, "Door Into the Dark" was published. He spent the academic year 1970-71 as a visiting Professor at the University of California in Berkeley and returned to Queen's University for another year. But a desire to pursue poetry full-time took him south to a cottage in Glanmore, County Wicklow, Republic of Ireland, in the summer of 1972 and "Wintering Out" was published. For the next three years he made his living as a freelance writer, presenting a radio programme called Imprint for RTE and doing occasional work for the BBC. It was during this time that he began giving readings throughout the U.K., Ireland, and the U.S. He was appointed to the Arts Council in the Republic of Ireland in 1974 and became an elected member of Aosdána. In 1974, he published "North" which addressed, in Heaney's particular way, the Troubles that were destroying friends and family back in Northern Ireland. In October 1975 he took up an appointment at Carysfort Teacher Training College in Dublin and in the following year he became Head of English, a post he was to hold until 1981. Then, in 1976, he moved into Dublin. "Field Work" appeared in 1979. In 1981 he became visiting professor at Harvard University - teaching one semester per year, to include workshops in creative writing. In 1982, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Queen's University and Fordham University. In 1983, along with the playwright Brian Friel and actor Stephen Rea, he co-founded Field Day Publishing. "Station Island" was published in 1984 and he was elected to the Boylston Chair of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard. The next year, Heaney received a Litt.D. from Bates College in Maine U.S.A. "The Haw Lantern" appeared in 1987 for which he won the Whitbread Award. In 1989, he was elected to a five-year term as Professor of Poetry at the Oxford University, to give three public lectures each year. In 1991, "Seeing Things" was published and an official cease-fire was declared in 1994, heralding the end of the Troubles. Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 for what the Nobel committee described as "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past". 1996 was a busy year. "The Spirit Level" was published and won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. Heaney was also appointed Emerson Poet in Residence to visit Harvard in non-teaching status every other autumn for six weeks. In 2001, "Electric Light" appeared, followed by "District and Circle" in 2005, and his most recent collection, "Human Chain" was published in 2010.

I know, the preceding seems to be anything but brief. Actually, I left out some key events. His biography has been so well documented that it is overwhelming sometimes. This is because the events of his life figure very strongly in his work, especially his childhood. He draws on this now-extinct Ireland to formulate some of the most enchanting music in the English language.

My favorite poem of his is the multi-stanza "Station Island". In it he confronts the Troubles head-on and examines his own conscience on the issues. The frame is a Catholic-like pilgrimage and he obediently goes through the Stations while conversing with ghosts or memories of family members and friends who have been murdered by terrorists and tend to be very critical towards the stance that Heaney has taken. The totured emotions and images which he wrestles with here are sublime. In the end, he settles the question within him, but the journey is fascinating snd full of pithy phrases.

Such as: "I thought of walking round/and round a space utterly empty,/ utterly a source, like the idea of sound." and "I hate how quick I was to know my place." and "The main thing is to write/ for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust/ that imagines its haven like your hands at night/ ... Let go, let fly, forget./ You've listened long enough. Now strike your note."

He handles language with an ease that is astonishing, as if it were potter's clay in his hands. The rest of us are left in awe and ashamed of our painful sfforts which ooze with the blood that we put into them. These are simple words, which speak to our lives, and ring so deeply into them that they cannot be removed.