Seamus Heaney was born on 13th April, 1939 on a farm near Castledawson, Northern Ireland. He died in Dublin 30th August 2013, aged 74. Seamus Heaney was a poet, critic and translator, who won numerous prizes and in 1995 was awarded the Nobel Prize. The American poet, Robert Lowell, has described Heaney as 'The most important Irish poet since Yeats'

In the poem 'On His Work in the English Tongue' dedicated to the memory of Ted Hughes, Heaney wrote:

Soul has its scruples. Things not to be said.

Things for keeping, that can keep the small-hours gaze

Open and steady. Things for the aye of God

And for poetry. Which is, as Milosz says,

'A dividend from ourselves,' a tribute paid

By what we have been true to. A thing allowed.

Bono, from U2, has presented a book of Heaney's poetry to every U.S. President he has met. Bono says, 'Seamus has been with me on every journey I have taken, and there have been many times when a retreat into his words has kept me afloat.'