Seamus Heaney

I suppose you could say my father's world was Thomas Hardy and my mother's D.H. Lawrence. ↗

— Seamus Heaney

#father #hardy #i #lawrence #mother

In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself. ↗

— Seamus Heaney

#fact #in fact #itself #lyric #medium

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 #groups #mutually #poetry #political

My point is there's a hidden Scotland in anyone who speaks the Northern Ireland speech. It's a terrific complicating factor, not just in Northern Ireland, but Ireland generally. ↗

— Seamus Heaney

#factor #generally #hidden #ireland #just

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it. ↗

— Seamus Heaney

#mysterious #poetry #relationship #slightly #wonder

The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also. ↗

— Seamus Heaney

#comes #completely #crises #crisis #gets

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 #elevation #fact #itself #life

The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine. ↗

— Seamus Heaney

#helped #i #imagine #inhabit #ireland

Then as the years went on and my listening became more deliberate, I would climb up on an arm of our big sofa to get my ear closer to the wireless speaker. ↗

— Seamus Heaney

#became #big #climb #closer #deliberate

Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit. ↗

— Seamus Heaney

#initiatives #kit #marriage #matter #peace