One of the best descriptions of the type of writer I am was given by Tom Paulin, who described himself as a ‘binge’ writer – like a binge drinker. I go on binges.
SEAMUS HEANEYIn the United States, in poetry workshops, it’s now quite a thing to make graduate students learn poems by heart.
More Seamus Heaney Quotes
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I feel myself part of something. Not only being part of a community but part of an actual moment and a movement of Irish writing and art. That sense of being part of the whole thing is the deepest joy.
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Write whatever you like!
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I would say that something important for me and for my generation in Northern Ireland was the 1947 Education Act, which allowed students who won scholarships to go on to secondary schools and thence to university.
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In a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty.
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Dylan Thomas is now as much a case history as a chapter in the history of poetry.
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We go to poetry, we go to literature in general, to be forwarded within ourselves.
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I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible.
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I think of the bog as a feminine goddess-ridden ground, rather like the territory of Ireland itself.
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Anybody serious about poetry knows how hard it is to achieve anything worthwhile in it.
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The kinds of truth that art gives us many, many times are small truths. They don’t have the resonance of an encyclical from the Pope stating an eternal truth, but they partake of the quality of eternity. There is a sort of timeless delight in them.
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You can have Irish identity in the north and also have your Irish passport.
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A person from Northern Ireland is naturally cautious.
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The experiment of poetry, as far as I am concerned, happens when the poem carries you beyond where you could have reasonably expected to go.
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Since I was a schoolboy, I’ve been used to being recognized on the road by old and young, and being bantered with and, indeed, being taunted.
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In the United States, in poetry workshops, it’s now quite a thing to make graduate students learn poems by heart.
SEAMUS HEANEY