North

In

North Seamus Heaney found a myth which allowed him to articulate a vision of Ireland - its people, history and landscape. Here the Irish experience is refracted through images drawn from different parts of the Northern European experience, and the idea of the north allows the poet to contemplate the violence on his home ground in relation to memories of the Scandinavian and English invasions which have marked Irish history so indelibly.



Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland.

Death of a Naturalist, his first collection of poems, appeared in 1966 and since then he has published poetry, criticism and translations - including

Beowulf (1999) - which have established him as one of the leading poets now at work. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

District and Circle (2006) was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2006.

Stepping Stones, a book of interviews conducted by Dennis O'Driscoll, appeared in 2008. In 2009 he received the David Cohen Prize for Literature.