Seamus Heaney

Seamus Justin Heaney (born 13 April 1939) is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. He currently lives in Dublin. Seamus Heaney was born the eldest of nine children at the family farmhouse called Mossbawn, between Castledawson and Toomebridge, thirty miles to the north-west of Belfast, in Northern Ireland. When he was a young boy his family moved to Bellaghy, a few miles away, which is now the family home. He was educated initially at Anahorish Primary School nearby where he won a scholarship to St Columb's College, then a Catholic boarding school in Derry. While studying at St Columb's his four-year-old brother Christopher was killed in a road accident, an event that he would later write about in two poems, "Mid-Term Break" and "The Blackbird of Glanmore". In 1957, Heaney travelled to Belfast to study English Language and Literature at the Queen's University of Belfast. He graduated in 1961 with a First Class Honours degree.... full article at wikipedia