As the majority of you will know, the very sad news is that Seamus Heaney, one of our great modern day poets, died last Friday (30th August 2013) in Dublin leaving us with a shimmering legacy that lights up the often gloaming subject matter with some of the most sticky strings of text you might ever read. This is our mini tribute to his life and work, as well as a call to all to take the time to read a few of his poems for yourself to get a sense of the sheer potential impact of his poetry.
While Heaney started out as a lecturer, he soon went on to impress the literature world with his first release, Eleven Poems, in 1965 at the age of 26, which he soon followed up with the mesmerising, Death of a Naturalist, in 1966. The latter contains 34 of the finest poems written in the last fifty years, including the title poem, the stunning Digging, which is perhaps Heaney’s most well known poems, and For the Commander of Eliza.
He followed his critically acclaimed and much loved introductions with yet more brilliance in the 1970s, including Wintering Out in 1972, both North and Stations in 1975, and Field Work in 1979. Within this sizeable body of poetry we had the superbly evocative The Tollund Man, Bog Queen, The Grauballe Man, Punishment and Strange Fruit, which make up what have become known as the bog poems.
The Nobel Prize winning poet went on to release many more collection of poems, each released as a thematic unit, linked by chains of words and concepts, but also flowing free in their nature from one collection to another, which has resulted in a number of collected poems editions. From Field Work came Station Island in 1984 and The Haw Lantern in 1987, which led on to Seeing Things in 1991, The Spirit Level in 1996, Electric Light in 2001, District and Circle in 2006 and his most recent poetry publication, Human Chain in 2010.
His significant number of poems have covered everything from childhood and family to nature and the aftermath of a stroke. Though he’s perhaps most famous for his treatment of the Irish troubles, he’s just as impactful in terms of his understanding of modern day life in Ireland, and the rest of the world, and it’s innate connection to the past, as well as the shaping of the future.
It’s not just poetry that he has gifted the world either. He was also been a prolific translator of other works, including Beowulf in 1999 and Alexander Pushkin’s Arion in 2002. If that’s not enough, he has been awarded more distinctions than the average field marshal, ranging from the E. M. Forster Award to the Nobel Prize in Literature, Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres and the T. S. Eliot Prize.
In short it’s been an amazingly sparkling career for the poet with his fat blackberries and bullfrogs, murky bogs, potato mold, family life and troubles. While Seamus Heaney’s death is a great loss for literature and poetry, we will always have his words to carry along with us like shards of shrapnel that dug in, got cut free and now rest warm in our pockets. Snug as a gun.
