Tweetspeak Poetry

  • Home
  • FREE prompts
  • Earth Song
  • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Books, Etc.
  • Patron Love

Poets and Poems: Seamus Heaney

By Glynn Young 12 Comments

poets and poems Seamus Heaney
Editor’s Note: Three days ago, we ran this post in celebration of the life and words of Seamus Heaney. Today, August 30, 2013, we say a sorrowful goodbye to the poet who so many loved (or will, we hope, still come to love).

As I seek to better appreciate poets and poems, I’ve been reading Seamus Heaney’s Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996 (1999), and simultaneously reading Dennis O’Driscoll’s Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney (2010). This wasn’t actually planned, but both books had been sitting on my shelf and it seemed to make sense to read them together.

The Interviews

What is particularly helpful is that O’Driscoll has arranged the interviews to cover some introductory subjects and then each one of Heaney’s collections, and Heaney’s volume pulls selected poems from the volumes through 1996. So I can read the poems and then read the interview covering the volume the poems appeared in.

The interviews occurred over a period of years. Most were done by letter and email. Two were actually broadcast programs taped and later transcribed. All of them describe what influenced Heaney, how he put the collections together, and what all of this work came to mean over time.

The Poetry

I first started reading Heaney’s poetry by backing into it. I knew he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, but I didn’t read his work until I picked by his translation of Beowulf (2001) in a bookstore in New Orleans. I hadn’t read Beowulf since college, and I was quickly drawn into Heaney’s translation of the story, reading the first ten pages right there in the bookstore.

Seamus HeaneyA year ago here at Tweetspeak Poetry, I reviewed Heaney’s Human Chain: Poems, and noted then that I had both his Opened Ground and the O’Driscoll interviews. The moment to read them finally arrived, and it’s been the right moment.

The interviews have the benefit of hindsight, but that’s generally true of all biographic works. O’Driscoll asks questions about each of Heaney’s poetry volumes, the poets and poems he knew, his upbringing in Northern Ireland and the influence it had on his work—all the questions one would hope would be asked and more.

Small Things

Heaney’s answers are looking backward, but even the passage of time can’t dim the excitement of receiving copies of a first poetry collection, of the understanding of what Heaney was trying to convey in a poem like “Death of a Naturalist, ” or how a poem like “The Diviner” wasn’t supposed to be in the first collection but Heaney happened to have it in his pocket while on a visit to the publisher.

Those are small things, but they are telling, and they are the events and accidents that readers can identify with, those seemingly inconsequential things like sticking a poem in your pocket and events come together so that it’s included in a volume.

Of course those small things, those little details, are what make Heaney’s poetry so accessible.

“New Formalism” Poets and Poems

Critics say Heaney falls in the “new formalism” wing of contemporary poetry, a wing that includes Dana Gioia, Mark Jarman, and Derek Walcott, among others. Regardless of the critics’ classification, I find Heaney to be an original, developing out his Catholic (and Irish Nationalist) roots but eventually transcending them. The past, however, is always with him.

Reading his poems and O’Driscoll’s interviews at the same time is an intriguing journey in poetry, memory, and often delight.

The Diviner

Cut from the green hedge a forked hazel stick
That he held tight by the arms of the V:
Circling the terrain, hunting the pluck
Of water, nervous, but professionally

Unfussed. The pluck came sharp as a sting.
The rod jerked with precise convulsions.
Spring water suddenly broadcasting
Through a green hazel its secret stations.

The bystanders would ask to have a try.
He handed them the rod without a word.
It lay dead in their grasp till, nonchalantly,
He gripped expectant wrists. The hazel stirred.

Related:

Heaney’s lecture for the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature ceremony.

Browse more poets and poems featured here at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Image by electropod. Sourced via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young, author of the novels Dancing Priest and A Light Shining.

___________________________

tweetspeak free newsletter sample

Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter.

We’ll make your Saturdays happy with a regular delivery of the best in poetry and poetic things.

Need a little convincing? Enjoy a free sample.

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Glynn Young
Glynn Young
Editor and Twitter-Party-Cool-Poem-Weaver at Tweetspeak Poetry
Glynn Young lives in St. Louis where he retired as the team leader for Online Strategy & Communications for a Fortune 500 company. Glynn writes poetry, short stories and fiction, and he loves to bike. He is the author of the Civil War romance Brookhaven, as well as Poetry at Work and the Dancing Priest Series. Find Glynn at Faith, Fiction, Friends.
Glynn Young
Latest posts by Glynn Young (see all)
  • A History of Children’s Stories: “The Haunted Wood” by Sam Leith - May 20, 2025
  • World War II Had Its Poets, Too - May 15, 2025
  • Czeslaw Milosz, 1946-1953: “Poet in the New World” - May 13, 2025

Filed Under: article, book reviews, Books, Getting Published, Interviews, Poems, poetry, poetry reviews, Poets, Seamus Heaney

Try Every Day Poems...

Comments

  1. Mary Sayler says

    August 27, 2013 at 9:00 am

    Glynn, I appreciate your discussing poetry and literature and pray that other members of our Christian Poets & Writers group on Facebook will be drawn to discovering their potential as Christian artists. Writing well helps us to use our God-given gifts effectively and increases the likelihood of our placing poems and writings almost anywhere that accepts well-written works.

    Reply
  2. Nancy Franson says

    August 27, 2013 at 9:21 am

    A small thing–I just so happened to receive a copy of Heaney’s Opened Ground.My family housed a graduate student intern this summer, and we discussed Operation Poetry Dare around the dinner table. While culling out some of his books from his years as an undergraduate English major, he asked if I was interested in a couple of books of Irish poetry.

    So now I have the beginnings of a poetry collection. And this is one of the volumes. What are the odds?

    Reply
  3. Maureen Doallas says

    August 27, 2013 at 11:14 am

    Thank you for mentioning the O’Driscoll interviews, Glynn. I’ll put his book on my list for next purchases. Heaney has written some marvelous poems.

    Reply
  4. Hampgal says

    September 2, 2013 at 1:26 pm

    When I received the news about S.H. I cried on & off for hours. Many of his poems and writing about poetry helped me cope for 9 years as caregiver to a parent with Alzheimer’s Disease. Solas síoraí to both Mom & S.H.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. This Week's Top Ten Poetic Picks | says:
    November 14, 2013 at 9:40 am

    […] word, also translated previously as “Hear me!” and “Indeed!” was rendered “So!” by Seamus Heaney in his translation of the (very old) Old English […]

    Reply
  2. Saturday Review of Books: August 31, 2013 | Semicolon says:
    November 24, 2013 at 4:42 pm

    […] Schmidt and Mr Anstruther)5. Hope (Complete Surrender – Biography of Eric Liddell)6. Glynn (Seamus Heaney)7. Beckie @ ByTheBook (To Honor And Trust)8. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Wishing on Willows)9. Beckie @ […]

    Reply
  3. Poets and Poems: Christopher Reid and “A Scattering” says:
    November 26, 2013 at 5:00 am

    […] poetry book of the year in 2009 and best overall book of the year (Reid was the first poet since Seamus Heaney to take the overall […]

    Reply
  4. Saturday Shortcuts – Planned Peasanthood says:
    March 2, 2014 at 5:51 pm

    […] | Poets and Poems: Seamus Heaney – …I find Heaney to be an original, developing out his Catholic (and Irish Nationalist) […]

    Reply
  5. Poets and Poems: J.R.R. Tolkien and “Beowulf” says:
    June 24, 2014 at 5:01 am

    […] the poetry section, I found a new translation of Beowulf by the Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney. Interest in Heaney and nostalgia for high school and college compelled me to buy it. It’s a fine […]

    Reply
  6. A Month with Keats: A Walk into His Life says:
    December 1, 2015 at 2:09 am

    […] In his lifetime, he published only 54 poems; he wrote about 150 in all. Some three decades later, it would be Tennyson who began the revival of interest in Keats and his poetry. Today, he might be called the most influential of all the Romantics—you can find his influence in the poetry of the Pre-Raphaelites, Tennyson, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Derek Waldcott and Seamus Heaney. […]

    Reply
  7. Eating and Drinking Poems: Seamus Heaney's 'Oysters' - says:
    June 21, 2016 at 3:00 pm

    […] on the porch of a Florida restaurant that backs up to a lagoon and ponder the Pleiades. As you read Seamus Heaney‘s poem “Oysters,” perhaps you, too, will start to feel the pull of the tides in each […]

    Reply
  8. Take Your Poet to Work: Seamus Heaney - says:
    June 23, 2016 at 10:59 am

    […] Because you can never have too many poets in your lunch box (or your desk drawer), we have a new collection of poets to release this year, including English Romantic poet William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and this week’s release, Irish poet Seamus Heaney. […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our May Menu

Patron Love

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world poetic.

The Graphic Novel

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

meet The Yellow Wallpaper characters

How to Write Poetry

Your Comments

  • Glynn on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Sandra Fox Murphy on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Glynn on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”
  • Bethany R. on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Stay in Touch With Us

Categories

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

Explore Work From Black Poets

About Us

  • • A Blessing for Writers
  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions
  • • The Write to Poetry

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poet-a-Day
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • 50 States Projects
  • • Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Library
  • • Edgar Allan Poe Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2025 Tweetspeak Poetry · FAQ, Disclosure & Privacy Policy