Heaney, Seamus

The Irish poet, essayist and translator Seamus Justin Heaney was born at Mossbawn Farm near Castledawson, County Derry, Northern Ireland and brought up in a Roman Catholic family as the oldest of nine siblings. His father was a farmer and cattle dealer. Heaney won a scholarship at St. Columb's College, a boarding school situated in Derry, where he learned Greek and Latin. He then read English language and literature at Queen's University, Belfast, he qualified as a teacher at St. Joseph's Teacher Training College and began to lecture there in 1963. Heaney had a long and distinguished academic career. Amongst other things he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford 1989–1994 and Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard 1984–1995. He was often invited as visiting professor to universities in the UK and the US.