Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), Ireland’s most recent Nobel laureate, was a poet, teacher, critic and translator, including from ancient and modern Greek. During a career spanning fifty years, he became one of the most celebrated poets of his generation. While often rooted in the landscape of his native County Derry in the north of Ireland, Heaney’s poetry has a universal appeal that was to find a worldwide readership. During his lifetime he was the recipient of many honours, including the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, and his work has been translated into 27 languages.His translation of Virgil’s Aeneid Book VI was published posthumously in 2016 to great
critical acclaim.

His legacy lives on, as readers continue to enjoy and engage with his poetry, prose, drama and translations, and through the Estate of Seamus Heaney, set up by his family to preserve and promote his work.

‘Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.’
from ‘Digging’