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I believe we are put here to improve civilisation.

Seamus Heaney

A public expectation, it has to be said, not of poetry as such but of political positions variously approvable by mutually disapproving groups.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Expectation Group Poetry Position
I think childhood is, generally speaking, a preparation for disappointment.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Childhood Disappointment Preparation Thinking
In my early teens, I acquired a kind of representative status: went on behalf of the family to wakes and funerals and so on. And I would be counted on as an adult contributor when it came to farm work – the hay in the summertime, for example.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Family Farm Funeral Kind Representation Work
I’m very conscious that people dear to me are alive in my imagination – poets in particular.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Conscious Imagination Myself People Poet
You can have Irish identity in the north and also have your Irish passport.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Identify Passport Yourself
I spend almost every morning with mail.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Mail Morning Myself
Write whatever you like!
SEAMUS HEANEY

Advice Writing
Your temperament is what you write with, but it’s also how you deal with the world.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Deal Temperature World Writing
Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Grow Manifestation Order Poetry Store
Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Mystery Poetry Relationship Slight
I think of Dermot Healy as the heir to Patrick Kavanagh.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Myself Thinking
One doesn’t want one’s identity coerced.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Identity Oneself
I don’t do as many readings as I used to. There was a time when I was on the road a lot more, at home in Ireland, in Britain, in Canada and the States, a time when I had more stamina and appetite for it.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Home Myself Reading Time
I think the first little jolt I got was reading Gerard Manley Hopkins – I liked other poems… but Hopkins was kind of electric for me – he changed the rules with speech, and the whole intensity of the language was there and so on.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Intense Language Myself Poem Reading Talk Thinking
Every time you read a poem aloud to yourself in the presence of others, you are reading it into yourself and them. Voice helps to carry words farther and deeper than the eye.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Eyes Poem Reading Time Voice
The murder of Sean Brown hurt my soul.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Hurt Murder Myself Soul

I believe we are put here to improve civilisation.

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I believe we are put here to improve civilisation.

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