Biography

Much of Heaney's writing is saturated with farm life, political expression, and pride of his Irish heritage. Heaney lived on a farm in Deaney until he was fourteen.  This move deeply saddened him and inspired the theme of Death of a Naturalist, "loss of innocence in childhood."  Being the eldest of nine children, Irish rituals demanded his presence at all local funerals of the bog people, so the poet was exposed to much death as a child.  This death came out in his writing such as Mid-Term Break and Funeral Rites.

It was in a boarding school during his high school years that Heaney discovered his biggest literary influence, T.S. Eliot. From The Hollow Men to Wasteland, Heaney began reading the literary giant's work and was instantly captivated by the power use of language that would "haunt him" everywhere he went.  In his own words, "T,S, Eliot was the way."

 At St.Columb's College Heaney was taught Irish and Latin. This schooling was pivotal in the creation of Heaney's most famous work, a translation of the classic epic, Beowulf, which was met with rave reviews.
Much of Heaney's writing produced out of his youth was self-centered. It detailed his childhood on the farm, but the tone of his poetry shifted after Bloody Sunday resulted in the death of 13 men in his hometown of Deaney.  Heaney wrote about this incident in "Door into the Dark" and his poetry took on a politically-driven message after that.

Heaney spent much of his adult life teaching Rhetoric and Oratory at several colleges in the United Kingdom and the United States. He also earned several awards including: the E.M. Forester award, T.S. Eliot award, and the Nobel Prize in Literature for "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth; which exalts everyday miracles and the past." His work is not only critically acclaimed, but he is the best selling poet in the UK, making up 2/3 of all sales for living poets.

Heaney, 72, suffered a stroke in 2006, but he survived. He now lives in Dublin although he still considers Deaney to be the "Country of his Mind" and a place that still births much of his poetry.