Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney was born in April of 1939 on a small farm in County Derry in Ireland, the first of nine children ( "Seamus Heaney'"Biography"). His parents died when he was just a child, after which he was raised by his uncle; when he was twelve, he started attending a Catholic boarding school called St. Columb's College. The school was in the city of Derry, forty miles from his family home, and the move was only the first of many that he made throughout his life. After graduating from St. Columb's, he attended Queen's University in Belfast, where he studied English. He then taught for several years, eventually going back to Queen's University to teach there in 1965 ( Ellmann, O'Clair, and Ramazani 723). He was a prolific writer, and he first began to garner attention for his unique style in the 1960's, when his poetry began to be published ("Seamus Heaney (1939- )"). During his early days as a poet, Heaney married his wife, Marie Devlin, with whom he has three children. Marie has strongly affected Heaney's life, as she has always supported his career and inspires much of his poetry. Over the years Heaney has taught English at many different universities around the world, including University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, and Oxford University. However, he has arranged most of his teaching jobs in a way that has allowed him to live in Ireland for the majority of each year. Even today, Heaney is still an extremely popular poet; in fact, two-thirds of all poetry anthologies that were sold in the United Kingdom in 2009 were written by Heaney ("Seamus Heaney (1939- )"). He is often considered the greatest Irish poet since W.B. Yeats (Ellmann, O'Clair, and Ramazani 721).

"Bogland" was written by Heaney in 1969 and was published in his anthology "Door into the Dark." It is a poem with seven quatrains, written in free verse, and is dedicated to T.P. Flanagan, whose 1967 painting entitled "Bogland (for Seamus Heaney)" lent inspiration to Heaney for this poem. On its surface, the poem is merely a description of Ireland's bogs. However, Heaney uses this description in order to show his readers that the land is ancient; the "bottomless" bog symbolizes Ireland's far-reaching history (line 28). In order to fully appreciate "Bogland," it is necessary to know that Heaney wrote it as one poem in a series featuring bogs, almost all of which focus upon the preserved corpses that have been discovered in bogs. It is also significant that from 1969 to 1972, there was a great deal of violence in Northern Ireland (Ellmann, O'Clair, and Ramazani 722). The violence affected Heaney deeply, and he used the corpses of the bogs as a launching point to first delve into Ireland's ancient culture, and then make connections to the present-day Ireland. Heaney seems to be saying that throughout Ireland's long history, it has never changed; it has always been rather dark and full of death and decay. However, despite its centuries of violence, Ireland has managed to survive; like the bog and the preserved bodies, Ireland will live through periods of decay and last forever.

Bibliography

Poem:

Heaney, Seamus. "Bogland." The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Volume 2. Eds. Ellmann, Richard, Robert O'Clair, and Jahan Ramazani. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2003. 725. Print.

Biography:

Ellmann, Richard, Robert O'Clair, and Jahan Ramazani. The Norton Antholody of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Volume 2. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2003. Print.

"Seamus Heaney (1939- )." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, 2010. Web. Mar 23 2011. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/seamus-heaney. "Seamus Heaney'"Biography." Nobelprize.org. The Nobel Foundation, 1995. Web. 23 Mar 2011. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1995/heaney-bio.html.