Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney married Marie Devlin, a school teacher, in August 1965, with whom he had three children.

He died on 30 August 2013, in Dublin, at the age of 74, following a short illness

Heaney was the first child born to Patrick Heaney and Margaret Kathleen McCann at his family’s farmhouse.

As a child he studied at the Anahorish Primary School, before earning a scholarship to St. Columb's College. He went to learn English Language and Literature at Queen's University, Belfast in 1957.

He graduated from Queen’s in 1961, after which he went on to join the Teacher’s Training Institute in Belfast.

While undergoing training to become a teacher, he was introduced to the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh, which inspired him to write and publish his own set of poetry, beginning in 1962.

After a series of publications in several local magazines, he became a lecturer at St Joseph's in 1963. Soon, he became a part of a young Belfast poets association, initiated by Philip Dennis Hobsbaum, a British teacher and poet.

‘Eleven Poems’, his first book was published in 1965 which was meant for the Queen's University Festival.

He published his groundbreaking work, ‘Death of a Naturalist’ in 1966, which received extremely positive critical reception, after which he was employed by Queen's University Belfast as Modern English Literature lecturer.

He left Belfast for Dublin in 1972, where he worked as a teacher at the Carysfort College. The same year, he published ‘Wintering Out’, another collection of poetry.

‘Death of a Naturalist’ by the author has 34 short poems, based on the experiences of a child, as he grows up. The book won several prestigious awards and helped Heaney carve a niche for himself in the literary world.

‘District and Circle’ is one of his best works of poetry which won the T. S. Eliot Prize, the highest esteemed award in poetry in U.K.

Out of his several translations, the translation of the epic ‘Old English’ poem ‘Beowulf’ is by far, his most notable work.