Remembering Séamus Heaney

I can't believe it's ten years this week since Seamus Heaney died. Time's arrow has certainly been flying at top speed! He was ireland's greatest poet since W B Yeats and at the time of his death, (30 August, 2013 at the age of 74) following a short illness, was arguably the world's best known poet writing in English.

Heaney was my teacher during my first year at Queen's University, Belfast, back in 1966. He had just published his first book of poems, Death of A Naturalist, to critical acclaim and was teaching in the English department of the university. It was the start of what was to become a glittering career. He would go on to be visiting lecturer at Harvard, Professor of Literature at Oxford, and above all, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. Following his Nobel Prize, he was feted with awards too numerous to mention.

It was a strange transition for a poet from such humble beginnings in the small town land of Mossbawn in Co Derry, near Castledawson (at the top left hand corner of Lough Neagh.) As he put it himself: "I came from scraggy farm and moss, Old patchworks that the pitch and toss Of history have left dishevelled … " (A Peacock's Feather).

He had a great love of European literature and numbered among his close friends several prominent Polish, French and Russian poets.

However, his poetry wasn't to everyone's liking. We Irish have an unenviable gift for pulling our great ones down to earth. I'm reminded here of what the English writer, Samuel Johnson, once said about us: "The Irish are a fair people, they speak nothing but ill of each other".

Heaney's poetry collection, North, published in 1994, dealt specifically with the Troubles and was accused of representing a Republican perspective. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Heaney was always his own man. He refused to be identified with any side in the Troubles and steered his own lonely path with great sensitivity and honesty. He stuck to what Yeats called, "the pure joy of things not indentured to any cause".

His poetry though not formally religious, has its own deep spirituality which I find particularly congenial. He never really outgrew his Catholic upbringing and often spoke and wrote memorably about what he called the 'radiance' of Catholicism. "It gave everything in the world a meaning. It brought a tremendous sense of being, of the dimensions of reality, the shimmering edges of things. The older I get, the more I remember the benediction of it all" (Harpers & Queen, 1995, p148). Heaney's prose was certainly equal to his poetry.

He was a man, much in demand, who had time for everyone; time for the passing word, the autograph or the card to someone who had written to him without introduction. As well as being a great poet, Heaney was also a great man. There was an attractive modesty about him. He could talk to anyone and was at ease whether talking to the local farmer or to the President of the USA.

I count myself privileged to have lived at the same time and I keep returning to his poems and essays. I tend to read more poetry than fiction or non -fiction because I think of poetry as the use of language in a more cared-for way, the story told through words and lines shaped and formed with patient and deliberate intent.

One of my great pleasures in life is reading good literature. I've been known to spend a small fortune on a book simply because I liked the quality of the writing in the introduction! The beauty and the power of language have always enthralled me. And Seamus Heaney has played no small part in my literary pilgrimage.