Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland in 1939. Death of a Naturalist, his first collection of poems, appeared in 1966, and was followed by many books of poetry, criticism and translation. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, and won the Whitbread Book of the Year for The Spirit Level (1996) and Beowulf (1999). Human Chain, his last collection of poems, won the 2010 Forward Prize for Best Collection. He died in 2013. His translation of Virgil’s Aeneid Book VI was published posthumously in 2016.
Seamus Heaney: 2009
