Seamus Heaney Biography

Seamus Heaney, one of greatest living poets of our age, was a wordsmith from Ireland, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His poems, which have achieved great critical acclaim and are very, popular with the common man as well. Most of his poetry is based on the tradition and events of Northern Ireland, to which he has been a witness since his childhood. Owing to his upbringing in countryside, Heaney was deeply influenced by the life of country, which later, found expression in his poetry. But then, as he grew up he also watched the industrial mushroom around him, and soon he saw the rural side of Ireland deplete. All these events influenced his artistic talents, and he ultimately incorporated all these in his writings. Majority of his works are a quest of long lost tradition or the ‘pre-modern’ times, in which men lived and thrived in concord. Nevertheless, he was not one of those disillusioned poets, who could not discover the positive elements of the modern and the post-modern era. As a poet, he grew and evolved with time, not by disparaging it, but by analyzing and understanding it. His strength and mastery over the language of English, coupled with his considerate thoughts and matured approach have served as an inspiration for the present generation.