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There’s never going to be a united Ireland, you know.

Seamus Heaney

In a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Beautiful Injustice Situation Violence
My language and my sensibility are yearning to admit a kind of religious or transcendent dimension. But then there’s the reality: there’s no Heaven, no afterlife of the sort we were promised, and no personal God.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Dimension God Language Personal Promise Reality Yearning
I’m a firm believer in learning by heart.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Believe Heart Learning
Poems that come swiftly are usually the ones that you keep.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Oneself Poem Swift
What I’ve said before, only half in joke, is that everybody in Ireland is famous. Or, maybe better, say everybody is familiar.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Better Famous Myself Talk
Tom Sleigh’s poetry is hard-earned and well founded. I great admire the way it refuses to cut emotional corners and yet achieves a sense of lyric absolution.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Absolute Admire Greatness Lyrics Poetry
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
Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Mystery Poetry Relationship Slight
I believe we are put here to improve civilisation.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Believe Civilization Improvement
I think childhood is, generally speaking, a preparation for disappointment.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Childhood Disappointment Preparation Thinking
The problem as you get older, is that you become more self-aware. At the same time, you have to surprise yourself. There’s no way of arranging the surprise, so it is tricky.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Arrangement Aware Old Problem Trick
I’ve been in the habit of helping people.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Habit Help Myself People
A person from Northern Ireland is naturally cautious.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Caution Natural Person
In the United States, in poetry workshops, it’s now quite a thing to make graduate students learn poems by heart.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Learning Poem Poetry Quite Student Workshop
Poetry is more a threshold than a path.
SEAMUS HEANEY

One Liner Path Poetry
The fact of the matter is that the most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival in it of poetry itself – as a vocation and an elevation almost.
SEAMUS HEANEY

Arrival Fact Life Miracle Myself Poetry

There’s never going to be a united Ireland, you know.

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There’s never going to be a united Ireland, you know.

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Popular Authors

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