Opened Ground
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney was born in 1939 in Co Derry where he grew up on a farm. In 1956 he went on a scholarship to Queen's University Belfast. In 1972 he gave up teaching to devote more time to his writing, and moved with his family to Glanmore in Co Wicklow, and later to Dublin. He was appointed to the Arts Council in 1974 and served until 1979. He is a member of Aosdana. His numerous collections have received many prizes, including the Somerset Maugham Award (1968), the Denis Devlin Award (1973), the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize (1975), the American Irish Foundation Literary Award (1973) and the W.H. Smith Annual Award (1976). In 1987 he was awarded the Whitbread Award for The Haw Lantern. In October 1995 Seamus Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Opened Ground is published by Faber