Seamus Heaney

Life
1939- [Seamus Justin Heaney]; b. 13 April, at Mossbawn, a farm between Toomebridge and Castledawson in Co. Derry; eldest of nine children with two sisters and six brothers in of Patrick and Margaret Heaney; ed. Anahorish Primary Sch., St. Columb’s, Derry [boarder], with Seamus Deane and others; taught by John Hume; enters QUB on scholarship, 1957; published poems in college magazine Gorgon; grad. with Ist class hons., and named outstanding student, 1961; spent his prize money on books of Louis MacNeice, J. M. Synge and Oscar Wilde; commenced teacher-training, and taught at St. Thomas’s Intermediate School, under Michael McLaverty, 1962-63; “Tractors”; and “Turkeys Observed” appeared in Belfast Telegraph, 1962 [var. 1963]; first joined Philip Hobsbaum’s QUB poetry circle, 1963, meeting on Mondays in the Hobsbaums’ flat; became aware of contemporary Southern poets in buying Robin Skelton’s edn. of Six Irish Poets (1962); published poems in The Irish Times; English lecturer at St Joseph’s College of Education (TTC), 1963-66; wrote “In our Own Dour Way”, an ‘extended essay’ on Ulster literary magazines (Trench, 1964); wrote “Digging”, Summer 1964; sent poem-collection entitled “Advancements to Learning” for publication to Dolmen Press, and refused, 1964; Hobsbaum sent Group poems to Edward Lucie Smith, resulting in three [by Heaney] appearing in The Statesman (Dec. 1964) under editorship of Karl Miller; Belfast Group given exposure by Mary Holland in Observer, during Belfast Festival, 1965; received letters of enquiry from Charles Monteith of Faber, January 1965; first collection, Death of A Naturalist (May 1966); m. Marie Devlin, Aug. 1965; son Michael, b. 1966; wrote “Requiem for the Croppies” to celebrate 1966 (dealing with Wexford rather than Antrim in Rebellion of 1798); winner of Eric Gregory Award, 1967, the Cholmondeley Award, 1967, Somerset Maugham Award, 1968, and Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, 1968; wrote “Bogland” after a visit to his friend the painter T. P. Flanagan in Autumn 1968; reporting Civil Rights for The Listener (“Old Derry Walls”, 28 Oct. 1968); QUB lecturer in English, 1968-72; contrib. “Bachelor Deceased” (June) and “The Thatcher” (Oct.) and other poems to The Honest Ulsterman during 1968; second son, Christopher, b. 1968; provided heavily ironic lyrics of song “Craig’s Dragoons” to be sung to the tune of “Dolly’s Brae”, for Seán Ó Riada’s Radio Éireann programme; issues Door into the Dark (1969), Poetry Book Society Choice; visits Spain in 1969; guest lecturer at UC Berkeley, 1970-71; resigned from ‘entirely agreeable’ teaching job in English Dept., QUB (Belfast) ‘to put the practice of poetry more deliberately at the centre of my life’; moved to cottage in Glanmore, nr. Ashford, Co Wicklow, 1972, acquiring it from the Canadian scholar Ann Saddlemyer; issues Wintering Out (Nov. 1972); winner of Irish-American cultural Foundation Award, 1972; ed. Soundings (1972), the long-running Leaving Certificate poetry anthology; occas. presented Radio Éireann programme Imprints, 1973-77, introducing Robert Lowell in 1973; dg. Catherine Ann, b. 1973; Denis Devlin Award, 1973; Writer in Residence Award of American Irish Foundation; appointed Head of English Dept. at Carysfort College, Dublin, 1975-1981, death of Colum McCartney, a cousin, with Louis O’Neill, in random sectarian killing, 1975 [commemorated in “The Strand at Lough Beg”, and later in Station Island]; issues North (1975), winner of E. M. Forster Award, 1975; publ. 25 ‘Stations’ poems in Frank Ormsby’s Honest Ulsterman pamphlet ser., 1975; settling in Dublin in 1976; Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, presented by Lowell, 1976; succeeds Lowell as leader of poetry workshop, Harvard, 1976; delivers ‘The Sense of Place’ [lecture], Ulster Museum, Summer 1977; delivers “The God in the Tree”, a radio-talk on early Irish nature-poetry incl. “Buile Suibhne”, and locating the origins of poetry in the pagan, feminine mysteries of the grove, RTÉ 1978; visits sites of Tollund Man in Silkeborg and the Grauballe man in Arrhus, Denmark; issues Field Work (1979); issues Selected Poems (1980), with a foreword by Ted Hughes; issues prose as Preoccupations (1980); joins newly-formed Field Day Company as Director with Seamus Deane, Brian Friel, and others, 1981; receives Harvard contract to teach one term per year, 1980; appt. visiting professor at Harvard, 1981; features at the front place in Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion’s Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry (1982), giving rise to a riposte in ‘An Open Letter’ (Derry 1983); receives Bennett Award, 1982; D.Litt, QUB 1982; issues Sweeney Astray (1983), from Irish; beneficiary of Lannan Foundation award ($50,000); elected Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard, 1984; issues Station Island (1984), including verses translated from St. John of the Cross (‘How well I know that fountain, filling, running,/although it is night …’); mother’s death, 1984; gave ‘The Placeless Heaven’ as opening Address at Kavanagh’s Yearly, Carrickmacross (Nov. 1985); hon. degree of Open University; father’s death 1986; T. S. Eliot Memorial Lecture at Canterbury, 1986, publ. as The Government of the Tongue (1986); inaugurates Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature at Emory Univ., Atlanta, Georgia, 1988; elected to Chair of Poetry at Oxford, 1989; appears on Record Island Discs, 1989; issues lectures Oxford as The Place of Writing (1989); a play, The Cure of Troy (1990), after Sophocles’ Philoctetes, representing the Greek figure’s decision to give up his disability, forgive those who have abandoned him, and return to Troy to help them with his legendary bow and hence broadly prefiguring the peace process in Nothern Ireland, presented by Field Day at Derry Guild Hall, 1990, and soon after in New York; further Oxford lectures published as The Redress of Poetry (1995); read his translation of Beowulf at QUB Centenary, 1995 (ded. John Braidwood); awarded Nobel Prize for Literature, 5 Oct. 1995 (c.£240,000), being accompanied to Sweden by family and friends including Seamus Deane; Nobel Lecture published as Crediting Poetry (1996); settled at house on Strand Rd., Sandymount (Dublin 4); issues The Spirit Level (1996), winner of Whitbread Poetry Prize, 1997 (£21,000) and Whitbread Book of the Year Award (2002); condemns Nigerian Govt. death sentence on Wole Soyinka in letter to New York Review of Books with seven other Nobel laureates, May 1997; Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996 (1998); gives address at funeral of Ted Hughes, reading Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn’s elegy for his brother (‘a stave is broken/in the wall of learning’), Oct. 1998; issues Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2000 (2002); trans. Sophocles Antigone as The Burial at Thebes (Abbey, 12 April 2004); received Pen/Cross award for lifetime literary achievement, Dublin, Feb. 2005. DIL DIW FDA ORM HAM OCIL

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Works

Poetry
Death of a Naturalist (London: Faber; NY: OUP 1966), 57pp. [ded. ‘for Marie’]; Door into the Dark (London: Faber; NY: OUP 1969), 56pp. [‘for my father and mother’; ult. poem “Bogland” ded. T. P. Flanagan]; A Boy Driving His Father to Confession (Farnham: Sceptre 1970), 7pp.; Wintering Out (London: Faber; NY: OUP 1972) [ded. ‘for David Hammond and Michael Longley’]; North (London: Faber & Faber 1975), 73pp., and Do. (NY: OUP 1976); Stations (Ultser Publications 1975) Field Work (London: Faber; NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1979) [27 poems]; Selected Poems 1965-1975 (London: Faber; NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1980), foreword by Ted Hughes; Versions from the Irish (Derry: Field Day 1983); Among Schoolchildren: A Lecture Dedicated to the Memory of John Malone (Belfast: John Malone Comm. 1983); “An Open Letter” [Field Day Pamphlets, No.2] (Derry: Field Day Co. 1983), rep. in Roger McHugh, ed., Ireland’s Field Day (London: Hutchinson 1985), pp.23-29; Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish (Orchard Gallery, Derry: Field Day 1983), 77pp., Do., (London: Faber [1983]), and Do. (NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1984), 85pp.; Ugolino, with 2 lithographs by Louis le Brocquy (Dublin: Andrew Carpenter 1979), 17pp. [ltd. edn. 125]; Station Island (London: Faber; NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1984) [ded. ‘for Brian Friel’]; Hailstones (Dublin: Gallery Press 1984), 24pp. [cased]; From the Republic of Conscience (Amnesty International 1985), 6pp., ill. John Behan [ltd. ed., 2,000 copies]; The Haw Lanthern (London: Faber & Faber; NY:Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1987), 51pp. [ded. ‘for Bernard and Jane McCabe’, and includes elegiac sequence ‘Clearances’; ltd. edn. 250, ded. to memory of his mother];The Cure of Troy, after Sophocles’ Philoctetes (Derry: Field Day 1990 [signed ltd. edn., 500]; (London: Faber & Faber 1990), 91pp. [verse-drama; ‘in mem. Robert Fitzgerald, poet and translator’]. New Selected Poems 1966-87 (London: Faber & Faber 1990), 241pp; also The Tree Clock] (Belfast: Linen Hall Library 1990) [ltd. ed., 870; var. 750]; Seeing Things (London: Faber & Faber 1991), 113pp., ded. ‘For Derek Mahon’; The Midnight Verdict (Oldcastle: Gallery 1994), 42pp. [translation of large parts of Merriman’s poem together with the story of Orpheus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses; ltd. edn. 1,000]; The Spirit Level (London: Faber & Faber 1996), 70pp. [ltd. signed edn. 350]; Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996 (London: Faber & Faber 1998), 478pp. [contains 200 poems and his Nobel Award address ‘Crediting Poetry’]; Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney (London: Faber & Faber 1999), xxx, 106pp.; Electic Light (London: Faber & Faber 2001), 96pp.; Anything Can Happen: A Poem and Essay, with 24 translations (Dublin: TownHouse 2004), 48pp.; Columcille the Scribe [Special Edition] (RIA 2004), €650 [version of ‘sgith mo crob on scribinn’, on vellum with script derived from Cathach by Tim O’Neill]

Critical Prose
Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-78 (London: Faber; Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1980), 224pp. [infra]; The Government of the Tongue: The 1986 TS Eliot Memorial Lectures & Other Critical Writings (London: Faber; NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1988) [infra]; The Place of Writing, intro. Ronald Schuchard (Georgia: Scholars Press 1989), 73pp. [Intro. 3-16]; The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures [Oxford Poetry lectures; ded. Bernard O’Donoghue] (London: Faber & Faber 1995; NY: Farrar, Straus & Giraud 1995), 211pp. [infra]; Crediting Poetry [The Nobel Lecture] (Oldcastle: Gallery 1996); Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2000 (London: Faber & Faber), 416pp. [infra].

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Articles & Essays
‘The Poetry of John Hewitt’, Threshold, No. 22 (Summer 1969); The Fire in the Flint: Reflections on the Poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins [Huddleston Lecture on English Poetry 1974] (OUP 1975); ‘The Poetry of Patrick Kavanagh, From Monaghan to the Grand Canal’, in Two Decades of Irish Writing, ed. Douglas Dunn (Cheshire: Carcanet 1975), pp.105-117; with Alan Brownjohn and Jon Stallworthy, [ed.,] The Makings of a Music: Reflections on the Poetry of Wordsworth and Yeats (Liverpool UP 1978), 18pp.; New Poems, anthology of contemporary poetry (London: Hutchinson 1971); ‘The Interesting Case of John Alphonsus Mulrennan’, in Planet 41 (1978), pp.34-37; ‘A Tale of Two Islands: Reflections on The Irish Literary Revival’, in P. J. D. Drury, ed., Irish Studies, I (Cambridge UP 1980), pp.1-20; ‘Yeats as an Example?’, in A Norman Jeffares, ed., Yeats, Sligo and Ireland, [Irish Literary Studies 6] (Colin Smythe 1980), pp.56-72; ed., with Ted Hughes, Arvon Foundation Poetry Competition 1980 (Tordmorden 1982), 173pp.; Place and Displacement: Recent Poetry of Northern Ireland (Grasmere: Trustee of Dove Cottage 1985) [var. 1984], Do., rep. in Andrews, ed., Contemporary Irish Poetry: A Collection of Critical Essays (London: Macmillan 1996), pp.124-44; ‘An Open Letter’, in Field Day Company, Ireland’s Field Day (London: Hutchinson 1985), pp.23[21]-30; ‘Envies and Identifications, Dante and the Modern Poet’, in Irish University Review, Vol. 15, No.1, (1985), pp.15-19; ‘Correspondences: Emigrants and Inner Exiles’, in Richard Kearney, ed., Migration: The Irish at Home and Abroad (Dublin: Wolfhound Press 1989), pp.21-31; foreword to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman, ed. John Quinn (RTE 1986; Mandarin 1990); ‘William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)’ in Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology (Derry 1991), Vol. II, pp.783-90; Sweeney’s Flight (based on revised text of ‘Sweeney Astray’), photographs by Rachel Gie (London: Faber & Faber 1992), 117pp., ill.; poems, with Tom Kelly [photos], and Peter Somerville-Large [text], Ireland: The Living Landscape (West Cork: Roberts Rinehart 1992), 167pp.; Joy at Twilight [var. Joy or Night], Last Things in the Poetry of W B Yeats and Philip Larkin [W. D. Thomas Memorial Lecture] (Swansea UP 1993) [0 607 6095 2]; ‘For Liberation: Brian Friel and the Use of Memory’ in Alan Peacock, ed., The Achievement of Brian Friel (1993), cp.240; ‘The Sense of the Past’, in History Ireland 1, 4 (Winter 1993), pp.33-37; ‘The Frontiers of Writing’, Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring 1994), pp.1-16; intro. to Conor Fallon (Dublin: Gandon 1995), 40pp.; also trans. with Stanislaw Baranczak, Laments by Jan Kochanowski (London: Faber & Faber 1995), 53pp. [three of which earlier appeared in Graph 2. 1 (Cork UP 1995); ‘Crediting Poetry’, The Nobel Lecture, printed in The New Republic (December 25 1995), pp.25-34; note also Heaney’s Oxford lecture on Brian Merriman, reprinted in The Southern Review ‘Special Irish Issue’, 31, 2 (1996) [the final item]; contrib. [essay] in Robert Crawford, ed., Robert Burns and Cultural Authority (Edinburgh UP 1997); ‘Time and time Again: Poetry and the Millenium’, in The European English Messenger, X, 2 (Autumn 2001), pp.19-23; ‘The trance and the translation’ [on Sorley MacLean], in The Guardian (30 Nov. 2002), [edited version of an address given at Edinburgh Festival, 2002]; ‘In the light of the imagination’ [on meeting Patrick Kavanagh], in The Irish Times (21 Oct. 2004) [Arts feature; see Archives, infra]; Seamus Heaney, Anything Can Happen, after Horace, intro. Bill Shipsey [Art for Amnesty] (Dublin: TownHouse 2004), 48pp., with trans. into Irish, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Basha, Dutch, Hebrew, Arabic, Serbian, Bosnian, German, Russian, Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese, Malay, French, Swahili, Spanish, Basque, Hindi, Urdu, Turkish, Greek. Response to 9/11].

Prefaces and Introductions
Introduction to Collected Short Stories of Michael McLaverty (Dublin: Poolbeg 1978), pp.7-9; Foreword to Joseph Dunne & James Kelly, eds., Childhood and its Discontents the first Seamus Heaney Lectures [St. Patrick’s College/NUI, Drumcondra] (Dublin: Liffey Press 2003), 240pp.

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Anthologies & Editions
Ed., Soundings: Annual Anthology of New Irish Poetry (Blackstaff 1974), 67pp. [var. 1972]; ed. with Ted Hughes, The Rattle Bag (London: Faber; NY: OUP 1982); with Ted Hughes, ed., The School Bag (London: Faber & Faber 1997), 590pp.; ed. W. B. Yeats: Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney (London: Faber 2000), 96pp.; Seamus Heaney, sel. & intro., William Wordsworth: Poems (London: Faber & Faber 2002), 140pp.; Seamus Heaney, sel. & ed., W. B. Yeats: Poems (London: Faber & Faber 2002), 130pp.[incls. rev. vers. of “W. B. Yeats”, in Field Day Anthology, 1991], and Do., as The Faber Yeats (London: Faber & Faber 2004) [q.pp.]

Discography
The Rough Field, 2 CDs (Claddagh Records [q.d.]); recorded at Chalk Farm; spoken by Benedict Kiely, Patrick Magee, Seamus Heaney, Tom McGurk and Montague (‘some of the more intimate poems’); the whole called an ‘orchestration of personal and tribal themes’ (Liam Miller); Electric Light [Faber/Penguin Audiobooks (London: Penguin, 2001), 2 tapes, 90 mins.

Bibliographical Details
Wintering Out (London: Faber & Faber 1972), 80pp. PART ONE: Fodder, 13; Bog Oak, 14; Anahorish, 16; Servant Boy, 17; The Last Mummer, 18; Land, 21; Gifts of Rain, 23; Toome, 26; Broagh, 27; Oracle, 28; The Backward Look, 29; Traditions, 31; A New Song, 33; The Other Side, 34; The Wool Trade, 37; Linen Town, 38; A Northern Hoard, 39 [1. Roots, 39; 2. No Man’s Land, 40; 3. Stump, 41; 4. No Sanctuary, 42; 5. Tinder, 43]; Midnight, 45; The Tollund Man, 47; Nerthus, 49; Cairn-maker, 50; Navvy, 51; Veteran’s Dream, 52; Augury, 53. PART TWO: Wedding Day, 57; Mother of the Groom, 58; Summer Home, 59; Serenades, 62; Somnambulist, 63; A Winter’s Tale, 64; Shore Woman, 66; Maighdean Mara, 68; Limbo, 70; Bye-Child, 71; Good-night, 73; First Calf, 74; May, 75; Fireside, 76; Dawn, 77; Travel, 78; Westering, 79.

North (London: Faber & Faber 1975), 73pp.; Acknowledgements [7]; Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication for Mary Heaney, 1. Sunlight [8]; 2. The Seed Cutters [10]; PART I: Antaeus [12]; Belderg [13]; Funeral Rites [15]; North [19]; Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces [21]; The Digging Skeleton [25]; Bone Dreams [27]; Come to the Bower [31]; Bog Queen [32]; The Grauballe Man [35]; Punishment [37]; Strange Fruit [39]; Kinship [40]; Ocean’s Love to Ireland [46]; Aisling [48]; Act of Union [49]; The Betrothal of Cavehill [51]; Hercules and Antæus [52]; PART II: The Unacknowledged Legislator’s Dream [56]; Whatever You Say Say Nothing [57]; Freedman [61]; Singing School [62] 1. The Ministry of Fear [63]; 2. A Constable Calls [66]; 3. Orange Drums [Tyrone [1966 [68]; 4. Summer 1969 [69]; 5. Fosterage [71]; 6. Exposure [72].

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Seeing Things (London: Faber & Faber 1991), CONTENTS, The Golden Bough; PART I; The Journey Back [7]; Markings [8]; Three Drawings: I. The Point [10], 2. The Pulse [11], 3. A Haul [12], Casting and Gathering [13]; Man and Boy [14]; Seeing Things [16]; The Ash Plant [19]; I. I. 87 [20]; An August Night [21]; Field of Vision [22]; The Pitchfork [23]; A Basket of Chestnuts [24]; The Biretta [26]; The Settle Bed [28]; The Schoolbag [30]; Glanmore Revisited: 1. Scrabble [31], 2. The Cot [32], 3. Scene Shifts [33], 4. I973 [34], 5 Lustral Sonnet [35], 6 Bedside Reading [36], 7 The Skylight [37]; A Pillowed Head [38]; A Royal Prospect [40]; A Retrospect [42]; The Rescue [45]; Wheels within Wheels [46]; The Sounds of Rain [48]; Fosterling [50]; PART II SQUARINGS: 1. Lightenings [o-xii; 53], 2. Settings [67], 3. Crossings [81], 4. Squarings [95]; The Crossing [111].

In Their Element, with Derek Mahon, (NI Arts Council 1977), pamphlet [18pp.]; contains poems by Heaney, and Death of a Naturalist; Follower; The Others Side; The Tollund Man; Summer Home; Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication [for Mary Heaney]; Bogland [for T. P. Flanagan]; Strange Fruit; Exposure; The Otter; The Badgers; and poems by Mahon [as infra]. [The poems were read at Belfast; Irvinestown; Omagh; Londonderry; Magherafelt; Banbridge; Ballycastle, 23-19 May.]

Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978 (London: Faber; Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1980), 224pp. CONTENTS: Acknowledgements [11]; Foreword [13]. I: Mossbawn [17]; Belfast [28]. II: Feeling into Words [41]; The Makings of a Music: Reflections on Wordsworth and Yeats [61]; The Fire i’ the Flint: Reflections on the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins [79]; Yeats as an Example? [98]; From Monaghan to the Grand Canal: The Poetry of Patrick Kavanagh [115]; The Sense of Place [131]; Englands of the Mind [150]. III In the Country of Convention: English Pastoral Verse [173]; The God in the Tree: Early Irish Nature Poetry [181]; Canticles to the Earth: Theodore Roethke [190]; Tradition and an Individual Talent: Hugh MacDiarmid [195]. A Memorable Voice: Stevie Smith [199]; The Labourer and the Lord: Francis Ledwidge and Lord Dunsany [202]; The Poetry of John Hewitt [207]; The Mixed Marriage: Paul Muldoon [211]; Digging Deeper: Brian Friel’s Volunteers [214]; Faith, Hope and Poetry: Osip Mandelstam [217]; Full Face: Robert Lowell [221].

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The Government of the Tongue [The 1986 T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures and Other Critical Writings] (London & Boston: Faber & Faber 1988), 172pp., ded. Charles Monteith. Acknowledgements [ix]; The Interesting Case of Nero, Chekhov’s Cognac and a Knocker [xi]. I: The Placeless Heaven: Another Look at Kavanagh [3]; The Main of Light [15]; The Murmur of Malvern [23]; The Poems of the Dispossessed Repossessed [30]; The Impact of Translation [36]; The Fully Exposed Poem [45]; Atlas of Civilization [54]; Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam. II: The Government of the Tongue [91]; Sounding Auden [109]; Lowell’s Command [129]; The Indefatigable Hoof-taps: Sylvia Plath [148]. Publishers’ Acknowledgements 171. [Bibl. lists The Placeless Heaven, Kavanagh’s Yearly, Carrickmacross, Nov. 1985, rep. in Massachusetts Review; Poems of the Dispossessed .. &c., review in Sunday Tribu[n]e; The Main of Light, in Larkin at Sixty (London: Faber & Faber 1982); Lowell’s Command, in Salmagundi, … &c.

The Redress of Poetry (London: Faber & Faber & Faber 1995), 213pp. [Oxford Poetry lectures, ten out of fifteen, exc. separate lectures on Robert Frost (previously printed in Salmagundi), and one on ‘Louis MacNeice’, subsumed in another; omitting also a lecture on younger Irish poets]. CONTENTS, ‘The Redress of Poetry’ [1]; ‘Extending the Alphabet: On Christopher Marlowe’s “Hero and Leander” [17]; ‘Orpheus in Ireland: On Brian Merriman’s The Midnight Court’ [38]; John Clare’s Prog [63]; Speranza in Reading: On “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” [83]; A Torchlight Procession of One: On Hugh McDiarmid [103]; Dylan the Durable? On Dylan Thomas [124]; Joy or Night: Last Things in the Poetry of W. B.Yeats and Philip Larkin [146]; Counting to a Hundred: On Elizabeth Bishop [164]; Frontiers of Writing [186]; Notes [204]; Publisher’s Acknowledgements [213].

Finders Keepers, Selected Prose, 1971-2002 (London: Faber 2002), 416pp. [For Dennis O’Driscoll and Julie O’Callaghan]. CONTENTS, Preface [ix]. PART 1: Mossbawn [3]; from Feeling into Words [14]; Learning from Eliot [26]; Belfast [39]; Cessation 1994 [45]; Earning a Rhyme [48]; Something to Write Home About [56]; On Poetry and Professing [67]. PART II: Englands of the Mind [77]; Yeats as an Example? [96]; Place and Displacement: Recent Poetry from Northern Ireland [112]; The Placeless Heaven: Another Look at Kavanagh [134]; The Main of Light [145]; Atlas of Civilization [153]; from Envies and Identifications: Dante and the Modern Poet [168]; from The Government of the Tongue [180]; from Sounding Auden [191]; Lowell’s Command [201]; from The Indefatigable Hoof-taps: Sylvia Plath [218]; from The Place of Writing - 1.) W. B. Yeats and Thoor Ballylee [232], 2.) Thomas Kinsella [239]; Edwin Muir [246]; from The Redress of Poetry [257]; from Extending the Alphabet: Christopher Marlowe [262]; John Clare’s Prog [275]; A Torchlight Procession of One: Hugh MacDiarmid [293]; from Dylan the Durable? On Dylan Thomas 312]; Joy or Night: Last Things in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats and Philip Larkin [316]; from Counting to a Hundred: Elizabeth Bishop [332]; Burns’s Art Speech [347]; Through-Other Places, Through-Other Times: The Irish Poet and Britain [364]. PART III: Stevie Smith’s Collected Poems [385]; Joyce’s Poetry [388]; Italo Calvino’s Mr Palomar [391]; Paul Muldoon’s The Annals of Chile [395]; Norman MacCaig [399]; Joseph Brodsky 1940-1996 [403]; On Ted Hughes’s “Littleblood” [407]; Secular and Millennial Milosz [410]. [Italics as on Contents pages.]

Occasional publications, Poems, ““Keeping Going, for H.H.”; “At Banagher”; “Saint Kevin and the Blackbird”; “Two Lorries”, in Fortnight, 344 (Nov. 1995), pp.26-27; ‘A wounded Power Rises from the Depths’, review of Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters (1998)], Irish Times (Weekend), 31 Jan. 1998); a translation from Beowulf [Faber & Faber 1999], ll.2241-70 appeared in Times Literary Supplement, 14 Nov. 1998; contributed to Liam Neeson, intro., Mother [UNICEF] (Dublin: O’Brien Press 1999), with Mo Mowlam, Jean Kennedy Smith, John Rocha, Graham North, and Bertie Ahern]; Also, ‘Viewing the Century’, Lecture on Poetry, BBC3, printed as ‘The peace of the Word’ (Sunday Times, 17 Jan. 1999.)

The Sense of Place [printings]: ‘The Sense of Place’ [1977], in Preoccupations (1980), pp.131-49; also as Foreword to Tony Canavan, Every Stoney Acre [q.d.]; also in Patricia Craig, ed., The Rattle of the North (1992); see also as ‘The Sense of the Past’, in Ulster Local Studies, ix (1985), pp.109-15 [cited in Kevin Whelan, ‘The Basis of Regionalism’, in Prionsias Ó Drisceoil, ed., Culture in Ireland, Regions, Identity and Power (QUB: Irish Studies Inst. 1993), p.100].

The Honest Ulsterman (journal contributions): ‘Bachelor Deceased, In Memoriam Pat McGuckin’, No. 2. p.5; ‘The Thatcher’, No. 6, p.3; ‘Writer at Work’, No. 8, p.13; ‘The Forge’, No. 8, p.14; ‘In an Airport Coach’, No. 13, p.16; Offerings, in mem. Patrick Rooney, No. 19, p.4-6, (I) ‘Turnip Man’; (ii) ‘High Street’; (iii) ‘From Cave Hill’; (iv) ‘September Song’; Two Poems, ‘High Summer’, and ‘Polder’, No. 60, p.9; from Clearances, No. 80, p.3; ‘The Old Team’ No. 80, p.5; ‘Boy Driving His Father to Confession’, No. 97, p.19. [See Tom Clyde, Index to The Honest Ulsterman, 1995.]

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Criticism

Monographs

R[obert] Buttel, Seamus Heaney [Irish Writers Series] (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP 1975)
Edward Broadbridge, ed. Seamus Heaney (Kobenhavn: Skoleradioen 1977)
Blake Morrison, Seamus Heaney [Contemporary Irish Writers] (London: Methuen 1982)
Nicholas McGuinn, Seamus Heaney: A Guide to the Selected Poems 1965-1975 (Leeds: Arnold-Wheaton 1986)
Neil Corcoran, Seamus Heaney (London: Faber & Faber; NY: Chealsea House 1986)
Elmer Andrews, The Poetry of Seamus Heaney: All the Realms of Whisper (London: Macmillan 1988)
Ronald Tamplin, Seamus Heaney (Milton Keynes: Open University Press 1989)
Thomas C. Foster, Seamus Heaney (Dublin: O’ Brien Press 1990) [var 1989]
Henry Hart, Seamus Heaney: Poet of Contrary Progressions (Syracuse UP 1992), 234[6]pp.
Michael Parker, Seamus Heaney: The Making of A Poet (Gill & Macmillan; Iowa UP 1993), 294pp.
Bernard O’Donoghue, Seamus Heaney and the Language of Poetry (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1994), 173pp.
Michael R. Molino, Questioning Tradition, Language, and Myth: The Poetry of Seamus Heaney (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press 1994)
J. W. Foster, The Achievement of Seamus Heaney [compilation of earlier essays] (Dublin: Lilliput 1996), 64pp.
Michael J. Durkan and Rand Brandes, eds. Seamus Heaney: A Reference Guide (NY: G. K. Hall 1996)
Phyllis Carey and Catherine Malloy, Seamus Heaney: The Shaping Spirit (London: AUP 1996)
Andrew Murphy, Seamus Heaney [Writers and Their Work Series] (Plymouth: Northcote House Publ. 1996)
Helen Vendler, Seamus Heaney: Life and Work (London: HarperCollins 1998), 224pp.

Critical Studies

1970-1979

James Randall, ‘An Interview with Seamus Heaney’, in Plough Shares, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1970), pp.[?]-22.
John Wilson Foster [q. title] in The Critical Quarterly (Spring 1974), pp.36-47.
Terence Brown, ‘Four New Voices, Poets of the Present’, in Northern Voices: Poets from Ulster (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1975), pp.171-213.
D. E. S. Maxwell, ‘Contemporary Poetry in Northern Ireland’, in Douglas Dunn, ed., Two Decades of Irish Writing (Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire: Carcanet 1975), pp.166-85 [remarks on Heaney, pp.171-74].
John Wilson Foster, ‘Seamus Heaney’s ‘A Lough Neagh Sequence’: Sources and Motifs’, Éire-Ireland (Summer 1977), pp.138-42.
Benedict Kiely, ‘A Raid into Dark Corners: The Poems of Seamus Heaney’, The Hollins Critic (October 1978), rep. in in A Raid into Dark Corners and Other Essays (Cork UP 1999), pp.45-54.
Arthur E. McGuinness, “Hoarder of the Common Ground”: Tradition and Ritual in Seamus Heaney’s Poetry’, in Éire-Ireland, 13, 2 (Summer 1978), pp.71-92.
Mark Patrick Hederman, ‘Seamus Heaney: the Reluctant Poetry’, Crane Bag, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1979), pp.61-70

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1980-1989

Alan Warner, ‘Seamus Heaney’ [chap.], in A Guide to Anglo-Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1981), pp.261-68.
Timothy Kearney, ‘"Befitting emblems of adversity", Seamus Heaney, the Poet and the Troubles’, in Threshold, No. 32 (Winter 1982).
Dillon Johnston, ‘Kavanagh and Heaney’ [chap.], in Irish Poetry After Joyce (Notre Dame UP 1985), pp.121-66.
Julian Gitzen, ‘Northern Ireland, The Post-Heaney Generation’, in Poesis, 6, 2 (1985), pp.47-64.
Elmer Andrews, ‘The Gift and the Craft: An Approach to the Poetry of Seamus Heaney’, in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 31 (1985) [q.pp.].
Seamus Deane, ‘Seamus Heaney: the Timorous and the Bold’, in Celtic Revivals: Essays in Modern Irish Literature 1880-1980 (London: Faber & Faber 1985), pp.174-86[88].
David Lloyd, ‘“Pap for the Dispossessed”: Seamus Heaney and the Poetics of Identity’, in Boundary, 2 (Winter/Spring 1985), pp.319-42 [rep. in Anomalous States: Irish Writing in the Post-Colonial Moment, Duke UP 1993, pp.13-40].
Robert Garrett, ‘The Poetry of Commitment: Seamus Heaney’, in Modern Irish Poetry: Tradition and Continuity from Yeats to Heaney (California UP 1986), pp.230-58.
H. A. Kelly, ‘Heaney’s Sweeney: The Poet as Version-Maker’, in Philological Quarterly, 65, 3 (Summer 1986), pp.293-310.
Edna Longley, ‘“Inner Émigré”, or “Artful Voyeur?”, Seamus Heaney’s North’, in Poetry in the Wars (Bloodaxe Books 1986), pp.140-69.
Michael Durkan, ‘Seamus Heaney: A Checklist for a Bibliography, in Irish University Review (1986) [q.pp.].
W. J. McCormack, ‘Seamus Heaney’s Preoccupations’, in The Battle of the Books: Two Decades of Irish Cultural Debate (Dublin: Lilliput 1986), pp.31-39.
Edna Longley, ‘Putting on the International Style’, in Irish Review, 5 (Autumn 1988), pp.75-81.
Eileen Cahill, ‘A Silent Voice: Seamus Heaney and Ulster Politics’, Critical Quarterly, 29, 3 (Autumn 1987), pp.55-59.
Joseph Swann, ‘The Poet as Critic: Seamus Heaney’s Reading of Wordsworth, Hopkins and Yeats’, in Wolfgang Zach and Heinz Kosok eds., Literary Interrelations: Ireland, England and the World, Vol. II: Comparison and Impact (Tübingen: Guntar Narr Verlag, 1987), pp. 361-72.
Darcy O’Brien, ‘Piety and Modernism, Seamus Heaney’s Station Island’, in James Joyce Quarterly, 26, 1 (1988), pp.51-65.
Henry Hart, ‘Ghostly Colloquies, Seamus Heaney’s “Station Island”’, in Irish University Review, 18, 2 (1988), pp.233-50.
‘Seamus Heaney: Fiftieth Birthday Issue’, Agenda (Spring 1989) [poems and a lecture, with essays on Heaney incl. Neil Corcoran, ‘Heaney’s Joyce, Eliot’s Yeats’, pp.37-47; Carolyn Meyer, ‘Orthodoxy, Independence and Influence in Seamus Heaney’s Station Island’, pp.48-61, et al.].
Seán Lysaght, ‘Heaney vs. Praeger, Contrasting Natures’ in Irish Review, 7 (Autumn 1989), pp.68-74.
Augustus J. Fry, ‘Confronting Seamus Heaney, A Personal Reading of his Early Poetry’, in C. C. Barfoot & Theo D’haen, eds., The Clash of Ireland: Literary Contrasts and Connections (Amsterdam: Rodopi 1989), pp.234-38.
Geert Lernout, ‘The Dantean Paradigm: Thomas Kinsella and Seamus Heaney’, in C. C. Barfoot and Theo D’haen, eds., The Clash of Ireland [… &c.], (1989), pp.248-64.

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1990-1999

Thomas B. O’Grady, ‘At a Potato Digging’: Seamus Heaney’s Great Hunger’, in Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 16, 1 (July 1990), pp.48-58.
Stan Smith, ‘Seamus Heaney: The Distance Between’, in Neil Corcoran, ed., The Chosen Ground: Essays on the Contemporary Poetry of Northern Ireland (Brigend, Mid Glamorgan: Seren Books; Dufour 1992), pp.35-61.
Richard Brown, ‘Bog Poems and Book Poems: Doubleness, Self-Transition and Pun in Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon’, in Neil Corcoran, ed., The Chosen Ground (1992), pp.153-67.
Desmond Fennell, Whatever You Say, Say Nothing: Why Seamus Heaney is No. 1 (1992) [pamph.].
Eamon Halpin, ‘Seamus Heaney and the Politics of Imagination’, in Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 20, 2 (Dec. 1994), pp.20-28.
Fiona Stafford, ‘“All gone into the world of light?”: Anglings and Aimings in Seamus Heaney’s Seeing Things’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 1, 1 (Spring 1994), pp.63-74.
Séamus MacGabhann, ‘The Redemptive Vision: Seamus Heaney’s Sweeney Astray’, in Brian Cosgrove, ed., Literature and the Supernatural [Essays for the Maynooth Bicentenary] (Dublin: Columba Press 1995), pp.132-45.
See Lothar Fietz & Hans-Werner Ludwig, Poetry in the British Isles: Non-Metropolitan Perspectives (Cardiff: Wales UP 1995) [q.pp.].
Peter MacDonald, ‘Seamus Heaney as Critic’, in Michael Kenneally, ed., Poetry in Contemporary Irish Literature [Studies in Contemporary Irish Literature 2] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1995), pp.174-89.
Gertrude Patterson, ‘“Unless soul clap its hands and sing”: Literature, Cultural Heritage and a Divided Society’, in Irish Studies Review (Spring 1996), pp.26-29.
D. Eagles, Seamus Heaney: Life of an Irish Poet (NY: Franklin Watts 1997).
Liam de Paor, ‘The Archaeology of a Poem: Heaney’s Seeing Things’, in The Recorder, 9, 1 (Spring 1996) [q.pp]; rep. in Landscapes with Figures (Dublin: Four Courts 1998), pp.210-16].
Hans Osterwalder, ‘An Equable Achievement: Seamus Heaney’s The Spirit Level’, in Irish Studies Review, 20 (Autumn 1997), p.30-35.
John Adames, ‘The Sonnet Mirror: Reflections and Revaluations in Seamus Heaney’s "Clearances"’, Irish University Review (Spring-Summer 1997), pp.276-86.
Philip Hobsbaum, ‘The Belfast Group: A Recollection’, Éire-Ireland 32, 2&3 (Summer/Autumn 1997), pp.173-82.
Rand Brandes, ‘Seamus Heaney’, in Alexander Gonzalez, Modern Irish Writers: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook (Conn: Greenwood Press 1997), pp.103-10.
Scott Brewster, ‘A Residual Poetry: Heaney, Mahon and Hedgehog History’, in Irish University Review, 28, 1 (Spring/Summer 1998), pp.56-66.
Richard Wall, ‘A Dialect Glossary for Seamus Heaney’s Works’, in Irish University Review, 28, 1 (Spring/Summer 1998), pp.68-87.
Michael Böss, ‘Roots in the Bog: Notion of Identity in the Poetry and Essays of Seamus Heaney’, in Karl-Heinz Westarp & Mihcael Böss, eds., Ireland: Towards new Identities? (Aarhus UP 1998), pp.134-45.
Tom Herron, ‘Spectaculars: Seamus Heaney and the Limits of Mimicry’, in Irish Review (August 1999), pp.183-91.
Eugene O’Brien, ‘Seamus Heaney’s Prose: Preoccupying Questions’, in Bill Lazenblatt, ed., Writing Ulster [‘Northern Narratives’], No. 6 (1999), pp.50-62.
J. Bemporad, Seamus Heaney: Life and Works (London: Books Inc. 1999).

2000-

Rui Carvalho Homem, ‘An Interview with Seamus Heaney’, in The European English Messenger, X, 2 (Autumn 2001), pp.24-30.
Eugene O’Brien, Seamus Heaney and the Place of Writing (Gainesville: Florida UP 2002; 2003), [xi], 191pp.
Mitsuko Ohno, ‘Hokusai, Basho, Zen and More: Japanese Influences on Irish Poets', in Journal of Irish Studies (IASIL-Japan), XVII (2002), pp.15-31; pp.20-21 [questionnaire-response with Irish poets; infra]
John Brown, In the Chair: Interview with Poets from the North of Ireland (Galway: Salmon Press 2002) [interview]
Eugene O’Brien, Seamus Heaney: Creating Ireland of the Mind (Dublin: Liffey Press 2003), 206pp
Dillon Johnston, ‘Violence in Seamus Heaney’s Poetry’, in Matthew Campbell, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry (Cambridge UP 2003), pp.113-32.
Christine Finn, Past Poetic Archaeology in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney (London: Duckworth 2004), 214pp.

Critical Collections

Tony Curtis, ed., The Art of Seamus Heaney (Bridgend: Seren Books/Poetry Wales Press Ltd. 1982, rev. edn., 1985), 180pp., and Do., 3rd rev. edn. Bridgend: Seren; Chester Springs: Dufour 1994), 239pp;
Harold Bloom, ed., Seamus Heaney [Modern Critical Views] (NY: Chelsea House 1986);
Jacqueline Genet, ed., Studies on Seamus Heaney (Caen Univ.: Centre de Publications 1987), [incl. essays by Claude Fiérobe; Adolphe Haberer; Maurice Harmon; Caroline MacDonagh; Patrick Rafroidi; Colin Meir; Jean Brihault, and Genet, chiefly in English];
Elmer Andrews, ed., Seamus Heaney: A Collection of Critical Essays (London Macmillan 1993), 273pp.: contribs. incl. Seamus Heaney, Terence Brown, Eilean Ní Chuilleanain, Michael Allen, Richard Kearney, Edna Longley, James Simmons, David Lloyd, John Lucas, Maurice Harmon, Robert Welch, Andrew Waterman, Louis Simpson, Peter McDonald, Patricia Craig, John Wilson Foster, Gerald Dawe, A. S. Knowland, Barbara Buchanan];
Robert Garrett [?ed.], Essays on Seamus Heaney (NY: G. K. Hall 1995).

Reviews

John Carey, ‘Lost and Found’, in New Statesman (31 Dec. 1965), pp.1033;
John Carey, ‘Brave New Worlds’, review of Seamus Heaney, The Spirit Level (Faber 1996), in Sunday Times, Books (28 April 1996), pp.1-2;
Christopher Ricks, ‘Growing Up’, in New Statesman, 71 (27 May 1966), p.778;
Marsh [i.e., Ian Hamilton], ‘Props for a Proposition’, in Observer (19 June 1966), pp.12;
C. B. Cox, ‘The Painter’s Eye’, in Spectator, 216, 7195 (20 May 1966), p.638;
Patricia Beer, ‘Seamus Heaney’s Third Book of Poems’, in Listener, 88, 2280 (7 Dec. 1972), p.795;
Peter Porter, ‘Poets’ places’, in Guardian (30 November 1972), pp.12;
Stephen Spender, ‘Can Poetry be Reviewed?’, in New York Review of Books, 10, 14 (20 Sept. 1973), p.8;
John Dunn, Douglas. ‘Moral Dandies’, in Encounter 40 (March 1973), pp.70;
Ciaran Carson, ‘Escaped from the Massacre?’ Honest Ulsterman, 50 (Winter 1975), pp.183-186;
Anthony Thwaite, ‘Neighbourly Murders’, in The Times Literary Supplement, 382 (1 Aug. 1975), pp.866;
Terry Eagleton, ‘Recent Poetry’, review of Seamus Heaney, Field Work, in Stand, 231 (1980), pp.76-79;
Derwent May, ‘Peace in Ireland?’ Listener (22 November 1979), pp.720-21;
Declan Kiberd, ‘Breech birth of a naturalist’, in Sunday Tribune (28 October 1984), pp.20;
Elizabeth Jennings, ‘The Spell-Binder’, in Spectator, 253, 8159 (24 November 1984), pp.30-31;
Henry Hart, ‘Seamus Heaney’s Poetry of Meditation: Door into the Dark’, in Twenty-Century Literature, Vol. 31 (1985);
Richard Ellmann, ‘Heaney Agonistes’, in New York Review of Books (4 March 1985) [q.p.];
John Carey, ‘The Stain of Words’, review of Seamus Heaney, The Haw Lantern, and Paul Muldoon, Meeting the British, in Sunday Times (21 June 1987), p.56 [... &c.];
Henry Hart, ‘Poetymologies in Seamus Heaney’s Wintering Out, Twenty-Century Literature, Vol. 35 (1989);
Bernard O’Donoghue, ‘Weight to the Lighter Scale’, Poetry Review, Vol. 79 (Winter 1989-90);
Elmer Andrews, long review [of] ‘Seeing Things’, in Linen Hall Review (Winter 1991), pp.27-29;
Seamus Deane, ‘The Politics of the Poetics’, Sunday Tribune (8 Oct. 1995);
John Bayley, ‘Professing Poetry’ review of Helen Vendler, The Given and the Made: Recent American Poets (Faber 1995). ‘Soul Says: On Recent Poetry; and ‘The Redress of Poetry’, in Times Literary Supplement (20 Oct. 1995), pp.9-10;
Gerald Dawe, ‘Praising the Poet’, Fortnight 344 (Nov. 1995);
Robert McLiam Wilson, ‘The Glittering Prize, in Fortnight Magazine (Nov. 1995);
Daniel Johnson, ‘Heaney: The Irishman Without Frontiers’, in The Times (6 Oct. 1995);
Peter Levi, ‘Lover of the upside-down, Peter Levi admires astute account of poetry from Seamus Heaney’, review of The Redress of Poetry, in Sunday Times (10 Oct. 1995) [‘Books’, p.11];
Declan Kiberd, ‘Heaney’s Local Pieties with Universal Appeal’, in Sunday Tribune (8 Oct. 1995);
Kiberd, review of Heaney, trans., Laments by Jan Kochanowski, with other works, in Tribune Magazine (3 Dec. 1995);
Medbh McGuckian, review of Redress of Poetry, in Fortnight Review, 344 (Nov. 1995), p.36;
Maurice Harmon, ‘To Be Most the Poet’, review of The Redress of Poetry, in Books Ireland (Nov. 1995), pp.281-82;
Michael Smith, review of Laments, in Irish Times (9 Dec. 1995), Weekend, p.8;
Michael Parker review of Laments, trans. by Heaney with Stanislaw Baranczak (1995) in Times Literary Supplement, (22 March 1996), p.26;
Nicholas Jenkins, ‘Travels and Release in Seamus Heaney’, in The Times Literary Supplement (5 July 1996);
Peter McDonald, ‘The Poet and the Finished Man: Heaney’s Oxford Lectures’, in The Irish Review, No. 19 (Spring/Summer 1996);
John Carey, ‘Brave New Worlds’, review of Seamus Heaney, The Spirit Level, in Sunday Times, (28 April 1996), [Books], pp.1-2;
Fintan O’Toole, ‘Lines from the Frontier’, Daily Telegraph (4 May 1996);
P. J. Kavanagh, ‘The dove keeps on rising’, review of The Spirit Level, in The Spectator (11 May 1996), p.43;
Nicholas Jenkins, ‘Walking on Air’, long review of Seamus Heaney, The Spirit Level, in TLS, 25 July 1996), pp.10-12;
Richard Tillinghast, review, New York Times Review of Books (21 July 1996), p.6 [featured with full-page port. on cover].

Interviews

Seamus Deane, interview with Seamus Heaney, in The Crane Bag, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1977), pp.61-72 [rep. in The Crane Bag: Book of Irish Studies (1982); same pag.];
John Haffenden, ed., Viewpoints: Poets in Conversation (London: Faber & Faber 1981) [incl. Heaney, Kinsella, Muldoon, Richard Murphy, Paulin, et. al.], pp.57-75;
Fintan O’Toole, ‘Beyond the Niceties’, Sunday Tribune, Vol. 8, No. 15 (10 April 1988);
Tom Adair, ‘Calling the Tune’, in Linenhall Review, Vol. 6 No. 2 (Autumn 1989);
John Breslin, "Seeing Things": John Breslin interviews Seamus Heaney’, in The Critic, 46 (Winter 1991);
George Greig, ‘At the Height of his Powers’, in The Sunday Times (8 Oct. 1998); Mark Lawson, ‘Turning Time Up and Over’, in The Guardian (30 April 1996);
[Karl Miller,] Seamus Heaney: A Conversation with Karl Miller (Between the Lines 2000), 112pp.

Special Issues

Agenda, 27, 1 (Spring 1989);
Colby Quarterly, 30, 1 (March 1994);
Salmagundi, 80 (Fall 1988).

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Notes

Woodruff Archive: Seamus Heaney donated a large collection of his papers to the Woodruff Library at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia in Sept. 2003. Dating back to 1964, the papers include correspondence with Brian Friel, Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon, Anthony Hecht, Ted Hughes, Robert Lowell and Robert Pinskey. The poet announced the donation at a reading at Emory in honour of the William Chace, a former president of the University and a scholar of Irish literature.

Margaret Hassan: Irish born aid worker executed by fundamentalist-resistance in Iraq - was honoured by minute of silence (UCG/NUI) at a gathering in Univ. College, Galway, where Seamus Heaney launched Anything Can Happen, his translation of Horace with an accompanying essay on the theme of 21st century conflict, published for Amnesty International.

Portraits of the poet: among numerous portraits are an oil by Edward McGuire (1974), now in Ulster Museum; a head by Carolyn Mulholland [best liked by the poet], and a ‘head’ by Louis le Brocquy.

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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)