The Nobel Prize in Literature 1995
Awarded on: 1995-10-05
"for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past"
Seamus Heaney
Born: 1939-04-13 in Casteldàwson, Northern Ireland
Gender: male
Field: Irish poet (1939–2013)
Biography
Seamus Justin Heaney was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is Death of a Naturalist (1966), his first major published volume. American poet Robert Lowell described him as "the most important Irish poet since Yeats", and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have said that he was "the greatest poet of our age". Robert Pinsky has stated that "with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller." Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world".