Seamus Heaney (1939–2013)

Born in Londonderry in 1939, Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney is among the best in Northern Irish literature. Heaney is considered one of the greatest poets of the late twentieth century, with a spectrum of awards received in his lifetime, including the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. His most famous volume, Death of a Naturalist (1966) explored his childhood in Northern Ireland, from Roman Catholic influences, political life, and the death of his younger brother at age four, in ‘Mid-term Break’ (1966). As a Professor of Poetry at Harvard and Oxford University, he became a Professor at his own institution, Queen’s University, Belfast, which opened the Seamus Heaney centre for poetry in 2003.