Seamus Justin Heaney was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is Death of a Naturalist (1966), his first major published volume. Heaney was and is still recognised as one of the principal contributors to poetry in Ireland during his lifetime. American poet Robert Lowell described him as "the most important Irish poet since Yeats", and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have said that he was "the greatest poet of our age". Robert Pinsky has stated that "with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller." Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world".
Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976. Dwight Garner argued that she was perhaps "the most purely gifted poet of the 20th century".
Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published more than thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. At Princeton University he is currently both the Howard G. B. Clark '21 University Professor in the Humanities and Founding Chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 to 2004 and has also served as president of the Poetry Society (UK) and Poetry Editor at The New Yorker.
Charles Wright is an American poet. He shared the National Book Award in 1983 for Country Music: Selected Early Poems and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for Black Zodiac. From 2014 to 2015, he served as the 20th Poet Laureate of the United States.
St Patrick's Purgatory is an ancient pilgrimage site on Station Island in Lough Derg, County Donegal, Ireland. According to legend, the site dates from the fifth century, when Christ showed Saint Patrick a cave, sometimes referred to as a pit or a well, on Station Island that was an entrance to Purgatory. Its importance in medieval times is clear from the fact that it is mentioned in texts from as early as 1185 and shown on maps from all over Europe as early as the fifteenth century. It is the only Irish site designated on Martin Behaim's world map of 1492.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
North (1975) is a collection of poems written by Seamus Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. It was the first of his works that directly dealt with the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and it looks frequently to the past for images and symbols relevant to the violence and political unrest of that time. Heaney has been recorded reading this collection on the Seamus Heaney Collected Poems album.
Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish is a version of the Irish poem Buile Shuibhne written by Seamus Heaney, based on an earlier translation by J.G. O'Keeffe. The work was first published in 1983 and won the 1985 PEN Translation Prize for verse, the first year the prize was awarded as such. Photographer Rachel Giese later took revised portions of the poem to accompany a collection of her photos titled Sweeney's Flight.
Robert Giroux was an American book editor and publisher. Starting his editing career with Harcourt, Brace & Co., he was hired away to work for Roger W. Straus, Jr. at Farrar & Straus in 1955, where he became a partner and, eventually, its chairman. The firm was henceforth known as Farrar, Straus and Giroux, where he was known by his nickname, "Bob".
New Selected Poems 1966–1987 is a poetry collection by Seamus Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. It was published in 1990 by Faber and Faber. It includes selections from each of Heaney's seven first volumes of verse:
The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes is a verse adaptation by Seamus Heaney of Sophocles' play Philoctetes. It was first published in 1991. The story comes from one of the myths relating to the Trojan War. It is dedicated in memory of poet and translator Robert Fitzgerald.
Dennis O'Driscoll was an Irish poet, essayist, critic and editor. Regarded as one of the best European poets of his time, Eileen Battersby considered him "the lyric equivalent of William Trevor" and a better poet "by far" than Raymond Carver. Gerard Smyth regarded him as "one of poetry's true champions and certainly its most prodigious archivist". His book on Seamus Heaney is regarded as the definitive biography of the Nobel laureate.
Christian Wiman is an American poet, translator and editor. Raised in the small west Texas town of Snyder, he graduated from Washington and Lee University and has taught at Northwestern University, Stanford University, Lynchburg College in Virginia, and the Prague School of Economics. In 2003, he became editor of the oldest American magazine of verse, Poetry, a role he stepped down from in June 2013. Wiman is now on the faculty of Yale University, where he teaches courses on Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music.
Collected Poems is a spoken-word recording of the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney reading his own work. It was released by RTÉ to mark his 70th birthday, which occurred on 13 April 2009. The fifteen-CD boxed set spans 556 tracks in over twelve hours of oral performance by the poet. The entire work was also released on one disc in MP3 format.
A sandpit is a low, wide container or shallow depression filled with soft (beach) sand in which children can play.
Selected Poems 1965–1975 is a poetry collection by Seamus Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. It was published in 1980 by Faber and Faber. It includes selections from Heaney's first four volumes of verse:
Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney is Dennis O'Driscoll's book-length portrait of Seamus Heaney, recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. It has been described as the nearest thing in existence to an autobiography of Heaney.
Lough Graney is a lake in County Clare, Ireland. The lake's outlet is the short River Graney, which flows through Lough O'Grady and past the town of Scarriff into the west side of Lough Derg.
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation is a verse translation of the Old English epic poem Beowulf into modern English by the Irish poet and playwright Seamus Heaney. It was published in 1999 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and Faber and Faber, and won that year's Whitbread Book of the Year Award.
Opened Ground: Poems 1966–1996 is a 1998 poetry collection by Seamus Heaney, published by Faber and Faber. It was published to replace his earlier 1990 collection titled New Selected Poems 1966–1987, including poems from said collection and later poems published after its release.
