Seamus Heaney

By:Rand Brandes

In a 1989 interview on the British Desert Island Disc radio program, Seamus Heaney says that although he grew up in South County Derry as a member of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, he never personally felt the physical brunt of sectarianism. Aware of the cultural differences dividing the province,

he felt his home was ‘‘secure’’ and devoid of what he calls ‘‘sectarian energy.’’ One source of this freedom was what he describes as the ‘‘aristocratic’’ demeanor of his farmer father, Patrick Heaney, who also dealt in cattle. Another source of security was the unusual attention his mother, Margaret, was able to give him and his eight younger brothers and sisters as a result of his live-in aunt Mary’s help with the farm. Seamus Justin Heaney was born on April 13,

1939; he spent his first twelve years growing up on the family farm, Mossbawn,

situated near the Moyola River and the town of Castledawson, approximately thirty-five miles northwest of Belfast.

As a child, Heaney loved to read and became an adept student; after attending the local Anahorish school from 1945 to 1951, Heaney entered St. Columb’s College, in the town of Derry. Graduating from St. Columb’s with honors, he was awarded a highly coveted scholarship to Queen’s University, Belfast. During his time at Queen’s from 1957 to 1961 Heaney began to test himself as a writer and published his first poem, ‘‘Nostalgia in the Afternoon’’ (under the pen name ‘‘Incertus,’’ 1959) in the student publication, Gorgon. Other poems,

articles, and even a short story soon followed. Heaney says in a 1965 interview:

‘‘The most important thing that Queen’s did for me was to make writing seem real.’’ Heaney graduated from Queen’s in 1961 with first-class honors in English language and literature. Soon after this Heaney encountered the work of the writer whom he says inspired him the most at this important time--Ted Hughes.

Although Heaney was encouraged to pursue postgraduate work in England,

he decided to enroll in St. Joseph’s College of Education in Andersontown,

Belfast, where he received his teacher’s diploma. During this time Heaney published his first poems outside the university. ‘‘Tractors’’ and ‘‘Turkeys Observed’’ were published in the Belfast Telegraph (1962); soon after, Heaney’s poems appeared in the Irish Times in Dublin and, perhaps most importantly in the New Statesman and The Listener in London. In the early and mid-1960s Heaney’s literary life intensified. He participated regularly in informal gatherings with other writers (now referred to as ‘‘The Group’’) that included poets such as Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, and, later, Paul Muldoon. As a lecturer in English at St. Joseph’s College in Belfast in 1963, Heaney met the short story writer Michael McLaverty, who encouraged the poet to pay attention to details and gave Heaney Patrick Kavanagh’s A Soul for Sale. Heaney has often attested to the centrality of Kavanagh’s antipastoral vision to his own work.

In 1964 Heaney submitted his book-length manuscript Advancements of Learning to Dolmen Press; when the Irish publisher did not show interest in the text, Heaney offered it to the British publishing house of Faber and Faber, which accepted it in 1965 in its revised form as Death of a Naturalist, the poet’s first book. Heaney has referred to 1965 as his annus mirabilis not only because of the book and the respect being shown for his work in England but also because of his marriage to Marie Devlin.

After 1965 the poet’s career began to accelerate with every new professional position and literary award. In 1966 he became a lecturer in English at Queen’s University, Belfast, an honored appointment that anticipated his 1984 designation as the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University and his election as professor of poetry at Oxford in 1990. Heaney’s work has received numerous awards, including the Geoffrey Faber Prize (1966), the Gregory Award (1966), Somerset Maugham Award (1966), Denis Devlin Award (1973), American-Irish Foundation Award (1973), E. M. Forster Award (1976),

Bennett Award (1982), Whitbread Book of the Year Award (1987), and the Premio Mondale (Italy, 1993). He has also received numerous honorary degrees.

Heaney’s home life, including the birth of three children, has kept pace with his hectic professional and poetic movements. 

After spending a year in Berkeley,

California, in 1970­-1971, Heaney resigned his position at Queen’s, and the family moved to Glanmore Cottage, County Wicklow. The reasons for the move to the republic were complex, but, as Heaney says, he ‘‘was determined to put the practice of poetry more deliberately at the centre of [his] life. It was a kind of test.’’

In 1975 Heaney took a teaching position at Carysfort College, Blackrock,

Dublin, where he became the head of the English Department in 1976. The family moved to Dublin the same year and has resided there since. In 1981Heaney resigned his Carysfort position to become a visiting professor at Harvard University. In 1980 he became one of six (Northern) founding directors of the Field Day Theatre Company, which has also produced The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. Heaney is a contributing editor.

‘‘Digging,’’ the first poem in Heaney’s first book, Death of a Naturalist (1966), is a synecdoche, of sorts, for the poet’s entire oeuvre: it is a poem based upon a childhood memory that is recalled in vivid detail. The memory often recalls a rite of passage, epiphany, or Wordsworthian ‘‘spot of time’’ that either confirms or disturbs the poet’s sense of self.

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney, "Digging" from Death of a Naturalist. Copyright 1966 by Seamus Heaney. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC, http://us.macmillan.com/fsg. All rights reserved.