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stoirmeil  |
Posted: 13-Apr-2009, 10:29 AM
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Celtic Guardian
Group: Celtic Nation
Posts: 3,581
Joined: 07-Nov-2004
Zodiac: Birch
Realm: New York
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Rose, Happy Birthday! You are in good company: here's another celt celebrating with you:
It's the birthday of Seamus Heaney, (books by this author) born in County Derry, Northern Ireland(1939). He grew up on his family's farm at Mossbawn, the oldest of nine children, and they all lived together in a three-room thatched house.
He went to Queen's University Belfast, where he joined the Gaelic society and the drama club and wrote for the school's literary magazine. And while he studied both Gaelic literature and the literature of England, he was firmly committed to the Irish tradition. He said, "I have maintained a notion of myself as Irish in a province that insists it is British."
He objected to being included in the 1982 Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry. He wrote:
Don't be surprised if I demur, for, be advised
My passport's green.
No glass of ours was ever raised
To toast The Queen.
In Belfast in the 1960s, Heaney hung out with a small group of aspiring poets who became known as "The Group." They wrote about things that were familiar to them, the people and places that they knew, following the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh's belief that "Parochialism is universal; it deals with the fundamentals."
In "Digging," one of his most celebrated early poems, he wrote:
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.
Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down […]
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
In 1969, violence erupted in Northern Ireland, beginning the 30-year era known as "The Troubles." The violence had a profound effect on Heaney's poetry and on his sense of duty as a poet. He wrote, "The question, as ever, is 'How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea?' And my answer is, by offering 'befitting emblems of adversity.'"
In 1995, Seamus Heaney won the Nobel Prize in literature.
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for a day. I hope you have a great day and wish you many more.
