FREEZE SPEECH BYJASUIS

Last night there was a big Ecumenical bonfire, lit on the border of Tyrone, in Ireland, with coal from Coalisland, astroturf from the Omagh and Cookstown 1916 societies, which was further fuelled by diesel from south Armagh, and wooden pallets from east Belfast, There was a couple of stolen sheep from the mountains of Mourne and a goat from Ballymena brought along, with some spuds from Carrickmore, to provide sustenance for the revellers. Some of the people's whiskey of Fermanagh and some dope from Derry were also brought over. The occasion was called to celebrate the Declaration of War on Free Speech by Obama and Cameron in Washington the previous day, after the Charlie Hebdo operation in Paris.






The enclave was attended well enough, with a couple of Papal Nuncios, representatives of the Free Presbyterian Church, the Orange Order, the Blueshirts and the Fleggers, all in attendance. There was a multitude of dissident women there too, from numerous paramilitary groups also there, all wearing balaclavas, so they couldn't be identified. The Apprentice bhoys and the Altar bhoys were also in attendance. Dirty Marty and the informer Kelly from Belfast were also in attendance, along with some of the Murphys from South Armagh and old IRA bouncers from Belfast. Iris was also there with her latest toy boy. Anyway, the convention started off civil enough, but as the night wore on and with the effects of the people's whiskey and the dope, voices began to rise among the various enclaves, gathered around the bonfire. Eventually the Xpensive Quill was called on, to deliver a speech, and was aided by one of his adjutants from Tyrone, to stagger on top of a few Shankill pallets, while supported as best as possible for his cupla focal, which went something along the following lines.


"Kamerads, we are gather to celebrate this wunderbar occasion, to Freeze Speech and I have brought along Irish literature, that I want you all to burn here tonight with me, as a token of your commitment to Censorship in Ireland. Included are the Irish Times, the Journal, the Irish News, the Belfast Newsletter, the Bible and a print out edition of Irish Blog" At which point he was interrupted by Iris, who stood up and screamed blasphemy of her Holy Bible, who shouted, "Let’s stop this, can you think of anything more vile than man and man or woman and woman and sexually abusing children? What I say I base on biblical pronouncements, based on God’s word. I am amazed that people are surprised when I quote from scriptures. It shows the churches either aren’t preaching God’s word or are watering it down. Now the Xpensive wants to censor it. I cannot think of anything more sickening than a child being abuse, as she ordered her toy boy to hit him a slap, which he duly did and flattened him. The Apprentice Bhoys then demanded that south Armagh Willie, make a speech, who appeared a little dopey from inhaling the smoke around the bonfire. Anyway Willie got up on top of the Shankill pallets, trampling on the Xpensive in the process. Willie's rant went along the following lines.


"Brethren, this indeed is as glorious as any twelfth of July bonfire. I have brought along my darling goat, which is of the same bloodline, that my father's, father's, father's, father wore out, for entertainment for my Flegger bhoys, an effigy of the Pope, a tricolour and photos of these murdering scum from over there, pointing towards, Crossmaglen, at which point the Murphys and a dozen of their cult members, battered poor Willie, with their hurleys, until the dissident women pulled them off him and fought off the fleggers, which eventually became woman to woman and man to man stuff, while poor Willie moaned, 'No Surender.' It was then proposed by the 1916 societies, to censor all further speeches or debate and that everyone was ordered to throw a sod of astroturf on the fire instead, as a token of their solidarity with Freeeze Speech. The Girr and Geogh, ordered every Irish book, since the foundation of the Freeze State, be burned immediately. The Papal nuncio nodded his head in approval, as several large crates of censored Irish literature were produced, which included the publications, still censored. These included Monty Python’s Life of Brian, Baise-moi, A Clockwork Orange, Ulysses by James Joyce, Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan, George Orwell, Edna O'Brien, ad infinitum...mostly all from the Freeze State, with some more from the Orange Scum state, both created after the 1916 rising, by Sinn Fein, along with the Blueshirts  and the help of the British thereafter.


Well after the book burning, the Apprentice Bhoys gave a rousing rendition of Croppies Lie Down, Kick the Pope, while they battered their big Lambeg Drums, as the took turns to ride Willie's goat around the bonfire.The conclaves of the astroturf 1916 rising, kept piling on the astroturf, as they sang seven drunken nights, while the liberated, dissident women, sneaked into the darkness in pairs, with their arms wrapped around each other, from which could be heard moans, groans and screams of Tiocfaidh Ar Oiche. The Murphy's started another row with the Fleggers and battered them with their hurleys. Willie kept on muttering about diesel and cigarettes, while yelling, 'mind me goat', until he was censored by Dirty Marty, who then had to rush off, to catch a plane to London to lick the Queen, while Kelly was on the phone to MI5, MI6, the PSNI, the Guards, Dads Army, the British Army and anyone who would listen to him, who had set up a buffer zone around the bonfire, to protect it from any Irish Freedom Fighters, who did not approve of censorship. The old IRA were also on the phone in large numbers, complaining to Facebook, to censor Irish Blog and in particular the Petition on the Care2 News Network, to bring Britain to the International Criminal Court, for the genocide of six million Irish in the Holocaust.


Well as the night wore on, the Papal Nuncios and the Altar bhoys, drifted into the darkness too, where cries of pain and pleasure now filled the air, as the Orange Order along with their Apprentice bhoys and the goat joined them. Eventually everyone left was drunk, except the remaining dissident women, who were looking at the stars, through the smoke filled air, with only their balaclavas on, as Iris and her toy boy joined them, for a truly ecumenical conclave of orgiastic, feminine delight, something along the lines of the liberated Sile na Gigs, undercover in Irish museums. Eventually the 1916 societies, ran out of astroturf and whiskey, deciding to have a final session, with a Clar, in which the first item on the agenda, was another split, followed by the second item, which included, the burning and censoring of the Proclamation, to be replaced by a revised document, that included devomax, a welfare state, their election manifesto and the stoning of Irish Blog, for being a blasphemer, all of which, was to be expedited, when everyone sobered up and were detoxed.

IRISH LIVES DON'T COUNT FOR THE CENSORED IGNORANT

For genuine, objective, researchers of the Irish Holocaust,who are not British agents, there is academic disagreement, about the precise figures, with regard to the numbers of Irish murdered. The figures vary between 5.2 million at the lower end of the scale, to 6.2 million at the higher end, which I will not personally dispute, considering the time frame. However after 800 years of British Occupation, I can assure the reader that the total figure, is well in excess of 6, probably, some where in the region of of seven million in total.

Whatever way you look at it, this war crime, against humanity, is the modern equivalent of nuking one of the major cities of the world. So in this context, it wouldn't be a good idea, to leave nukes hanging around near the Irish, no more than it is a good idea to leave them around the Jews. Now, I've been listening to Irish jokes, since I was knee high, and indeed Irish people have as good a sense of humour as anyone, but nuking a major world city, such as London, is a pretty sick joke and is no more funny than is the Irish Holocaust.

A famous Irish joke, goes along the lines of the following, that the reason God invented Alcohol, was to prevent the Irish taking over the world. Now the last time I checked, an Irish American by the name of Dempsey, which is my mother's side of the family, was General of the U.S Army. Dempseys are pretty wild people, but if you put drink in them, they become mad. Now I know Martin does a bit of partying and with his finger on the button on the one hand, and a whisky in the other, I'd advise London to wind their necks in, especially if they screen comedies about the Irish Holocaust or have sitcoms in the States, about an Irish American alcoholic.

Germany had to make a 100 billion compensation to the Jews, for their Holocaust. I calculate, bearing in mind the time factor, and with inflation, the irish Holocaust was even bigger, that Britain owes Ireland a modest 200 billion minimum, in reparations for the Irish holocaust. Now if any of you readers, have the ear of Gerry Adams, before he becomes Taoiseach, could you have a wee word with him. Tell him Irish Blog suggested, that as soon as he takes office, he immediately, pick up the phone to Cameron, and tell him in no uncertain terms, to cough up and get his lot out of Ireland now, as Ireland will not repay anymore of it's EU debt until he complies, failing which, his Goverment will start a campaign worldwide,including the US, along the lines, that Israel has already sucessfully done. 

Sadly, knowing the sinners, with their future Minister for Finance, putting on lot of weight recently, they would probably ask for 300 billion and settle for 50 billion, just to stay quiet about it, along the lines of the Stormont House Agreement, where Irish water in the north, is already privatized by them. If it was up to me, I would tell them to cancel the fraudulent bankster, bailout debt and they leave Ireland immediately in peace, becuase there's no luck in blood money. Now if you don't hear from Irish Blog again, in the near future, probably some camouflaged Brit agent, has caused my demise. So please, educate, organize and agitate. You can please start, by sharing this blog, if you agree, because like these facts below, I am semi-censored by British agents and despite the events, being 150 years later, it is still dangerous to write about these facts. So carry the message and try to share these facts, which you can check below, far and wide, especially to the 80 million Irish diaspora worldwide.

1. 
   

Toll of the Irish Holocaust




(Click Map Above)




Page List: Introduction
Britain's Cover Up
The Food Removal
Voices in the Wilderness
Official British Intent
Toll of Holocaust
Complicity
What We Must Do
Lisnabinnia Memorial
Liverpool, Great Hunger
Sister Jean Marie


Toll of Irish Holocaust. The 1841 census of Ireland revealed a population of 10,897,449. This figure includes the correction factor established by that year's official partial recount. When, between 1779 and 1841, the U.S. population increased by 640 percent, and England's is estimated to have increased, despite massive emigration to its colonies, by 100 percent, it is generally accepted that Ireland's population increase was 172% 10. The average annual component of this 172% increase is x in the formula (1+ x)62 = 1 + 172%; thus 0.0163, or 1.63%. Accepting that this 1.63% rate of annual population increase continued until mid-1846 (one human gestation after the late-1845 beginning of removal of Ireland's food), the 1846 population was 11,815,011.
Assuming that rate continued, the population in 1851, absent the starvation, would have been approximately 12,809,841. However; the 1851 census recorded a population of 6,552,385; thus there was a "disappearance" of 6,257,456. This population-loss figure of 6,257,456 is scarcely susceptible to significant challenge, being derived directly from the British government's own censuses for Ireland. It is reasonable to assume that the rigor established in the recount of 1841 became the standard for the 1851 census; so that any residual undercount would be systemic, affecting 1841 and 1851 proportionately (and, if known, would increase the murder total). These 6,257,456 include roughly 1,000,000 who successfully fled into exile and another 100,000 unborn between 1846 and 1851 due to malnutrition-induced infertility. Of the 100,000 who fled to Canada in 1847, only 60,000 were still alive one month after landing.11 Among the 40,000 dead was Henry Ford's father's mother who died en route from Cork or in quarantine on Quebec's Grosse Ile.
Thus; though from 1845 through 1850, 6,257,456 "disappeared," the number murdered is approximately 1.1 million fewer; i.e., 5.16 millions. Consequently; if Britain's census figures for Ireland are correct the British government murdered approximately 5.16 million Irish men, women and children; making it the Irish Holocaust. This number, 5.16 million, exceeds the high end of the range (4.2 to 5.1 million) of serious estimates of the number of Jews murdered by Nazis. The least reliable component of the foregoing arithmetic is the number assumed to have successfully fled. If the fleers who survived prove to number, say, 900,000 instead of 1,000,000, the murder count will have to be corrected from 5.16 to 5.26 millions. This amount of adjustment, up or down, of the 5.16 millions murdered is determinable by sensitive review of the immigration records of the U.S., Canada, Argentina, and Australia; and of government records on the Irish who fled to Britain at the time. We invite bona fide documentation of the foregoing; whether in confirmation or rebuttal. Economists and historians are disqualified if their published work on the events of 1845-1850 covers up the British army's central role therein. Such individuals lack the standing to participate in this truth-quest.

To our knowledge nobody else has ever published the above arithmetic or named the food removal regiments and battleships.Evidence that other truth-telling accounts exist would be greatly appreciated. Irish academia shuns and slurs Tom Gallagher's Paddy's Lament and Englishwoman Cecil Woodham-Smith's The Great Hunger for mentioning the Food Removal. Woodham-Smith fudged, but not enough to satisfy the cover-up cabal. For example; she reported that the 1841 partial recount established a correction factor of one-third for the 1841 census figure; but she used the uncorrected figure to calculate! By this and other fudges she arrived at a population-loss of only 2.5 million. She allocated only half a page to the core facts of the Genocide; the food removal data, while using some two hundred pages to describe British government "relief measures" as if they were something other than cosmetic exercises; a cover-up. But just as Telefis Eireann out-Britished Yorkshire TV by refusing to co-premiere the latter's 1993 exposé of the 5/17/74 British bombings of Dublin/Monaghan streets that murdered 33 and maimed 253; and as the Irish police menace the survivors of that bombing instead of arresting the known British perpetrators; so do Irish historians out-British Woodham-Smith by ostracizing her for exposing the Food Removal. They out-do themselves in describing the "benefit" of the Irish Holocaust; how Britain reduced poverty in Ireland ( by murdering those it had impoverished! They promote the notion that only the blighted potato crop belonged to the Irish while Ireland's abundant livestock, grains, etc., all "belonged" to mostly absentee English landlords. By that insane standard all of the property and production of Europe and Asia, excepting starvation rations for workers, would belong to W.W.II GIs and their heirs (or to the Axis had it won).

Irish are not guilty. Though many Holocaust Irish, like many, say, Auschwitz Jews, took deadly advantage of their own weakest, neither the Irish nor Jewish communities had hand or part in the conceiving and planning of the genocides from London and Berlin; respectively. But, the German government repented and paid $100 billion (dollars) reparations to Jews while the British government and its Dublin surrogates still use terror and slander against those who commemorate the Irish Holocaust. It is still dangerous - after 150 years - to reveal the truth of it. ...

CAMERON MULTICULTURALISM WAR ATTACKS BRITISH VALUES

They are all twats.

Moon-faced public schoolboys who still  believe

 in all the old shite that their privilged class 

have for ever. The only difference between 

Cameron and orangemen is that he has been

 told he’s not actually allowed to say nasty 

bigoted objectionable things as they; so he says

 fluffy crap that means nothing, still screwing

both countries though, oh sorry – that’s  the 

labour parties in both, i forgot, or (this bit

unavailable due to cuts – please make up your

 own incredible excuse here)

EAT YOUR HEART OUT CAMERON

GEORGE GALLOWAY HOUSE OF                                                                  COMMONERS 

Seamus Heaney, acclaimed by many as the best Irish 

poet since Yeats, has died aged 74.Heaney was born 

near Toomebridge, British Occupied Ireland, but as a 

child moved to Bellaghy. He was a teacher and then had 

a  distinguished career in poetry, winning the Nobel 

Prize for literature in 1995.

Requiem for the Croppies 

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley...
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp...
We moved quick and sudden in our own country.
The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.
A people hardly marching... on the hike...
We found new tactics happening each day:
We'd cut through reins and rider with the pike
And stampede cattle into infantry,
Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.
Until... on Vinegar Hill... the final conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August... the barley grew up out of our grave

by Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney






Heaney addresses the Law Society of
University College Dublin, 2009
Born 13 April 1939
Castledawson, Northern Ireland
Died 30 August 2013 (aged 74)
Occupation Poet, playwright, translator
Nationality Irish
Period 1966 – 2013
Notable work(s) Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996
Beowulf (translation)
District and Circle
The Spirit Level
Notable award(s) Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
1968
E. M. Forster Award
1975
Nobel Prize in Literature
1995
Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres
1996
Saoi of Aosdána
1997
Golden Wreath of Poetry
2001
T. S. Eliot Prize
2006
The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry Lifetime Recognition Award
2012


Signature File:Seamus Heaney signature.svg


Seamus Heaney (/ˈʃeɪməs ˈhiːni/; 13 April 1939 - 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer and recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born at Mossbawn farmhouse between Castledawson and Toomebridge, he resided in Dublinuntil his death.[1][2]

Other awards that Heaney has received include the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize(1968), the E. M. Forster Award (1975), the PEN Translation Prize (1985), the Golden Wreath of Poetry (2001), T. S. Eliot Prize (2006) and two Whitbread Prizes (1996 and 1999).[3][4] He has been a member of Aosdána since its foundation and has been Saoisince 1997. He was both the Harvard and the Oxford Professor of Poetry and was made a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres in 1996. Heaney's literary papers are held by the National Library of Ireland. On 6 June 2012, he was awarded the Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry.

Robert Pinsky observes of Heaney, "with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller".[5] Robert Lowell called him "the most important Irish poet since Yeats" and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have echoed the sentiment that he was "the greatest poet of our age".[


From Mid-Term Break

Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

“
”
from "Mid-term break",
Death of a Naturalist (1966)

Heaney was born on 13 April 1939, at the family farmhouse called Mossbawn,[1] between Castledawson and Toomebridge in Northern Ireland; he was the first of nine children. In 1953, his family moved to Bellaghy, a few miles away, which is now the family home. His father, Patrick Heaney, was the eighth child of ten born to James and Sarah Heaney.[6] Patrick was a farmer, but his real commitment was to cattle-dealing, to which he was introduced by the uncles who had cared for him after the early death of his own parents.[7]

Heaney's mother, Margaret Kathleen McCann, came from the McCann family,[8] whose uncles and relations were employed in the local linen mill, and whose aunt had worked as a maid for the mill owner's family. The poet has commented on the fact that his parentage thus contains both the Ireland of the cattle-herding Gaelic past and the Ulster of the Industrial Revolution; he considers this to have been a significant tension in his background. Heaney initially attended Anahorish Primary School, and when he was twelve years-old, he won a scholarship to St. Columb's College, a Roman Catholic boarding school situated in Derry. Heaney's brother, Christopher, was killed in a road accident at the age of four, while Heaney was studying at St. Columb's. The poems "Mid-Term Break" and "The Blackbird of Glanmore" focus on his brother's death.[9]
Career[edit source | editbeta]
1957–1969[edit source | editbeta]

Seamus Heaney in 1970


From "Digging"

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

“
”
from "Digging", Death of a Naturalist (1966)
For more details on this part of Heaney's career, see his collections, Death of a Naturalist andDoor into the Dark.

In 1957, Heaney travelled to Belfast to study English Language and Literature at Queen's University Belfast. During his time in Belfast, he found a copy of Ted Hughes's Lupercal, which spurred him to write poetry. "Suddenly, the matter of contemporary poetry was the material of my own life," he has said.[3] He graduated in 1961 with a First Class Honours degree. During teacher training at St Joseph's Teacher Training College in Belfast (now merged with St Mary's, University College), Heaney went on a placement to St Thomas' secondary Intermediate School in west Belfast. The headmaster of this school was the writer Michael McLaverty from County Monaghan, who introduced Heaney to the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh.[10][11] With McLaverty's mentorship, Heaney first started to publish poetry, beginning in 1962. Hillal describes how McLaverty was like a foster father to the younger Belfast poet.[12] In the introduction to McLaverty's Collected works, Heaney summarised the poet's contribution and influence: "His voice was modestly pitched, he never sought the limelight, yet for all that, his place in our literature is secure."[13] Heaney's poem Fosterage, in the sequenceSinging School from North (1975) is dedicated to him.

In 1963, Heaney became a lecturer at St Joseph's and in the spring of 1963, after contributing various articles to local magazines, he came to the attention of Philip Hobsbaum, then an English lecturer at Queen's University. Hobsbaum was to set up a Belfast Group of local young poets (to mirror the success he had with the London group) and this would bring Heaney into contact with other Belfast poets such as Derek Mahon and Michael Longley. In August 1965 he married Marie Devlin, a school teacher and native of Ardboe, County Tyrone. (Devlin is a writer herself and, in 1994, published Over Nine Waves, a collection of traditional Irish myths and legends.) Heaney's first book, Eleven Poems, was published in November 1965 for the Queen's University Festival. In 1966, Faber and Faber published his first major volume, called Death of a Naturalist. This collection met with much critical acclaim and went on to win several awards, the Gregory Award for Young Writers and the Geoffrey Faber Prize.[11]Also in 1966, he was appointed as a lecturer in Modern English Literature at Queen's University Belfast and his first son, Michael, was born. A second son, Christopher, was born in 1968. That same year, with Michael Longley, Heaney took part in a reading tour calledRoom to Rhyme, which led to much exposure for the poet's work. In 1969, his second major volume, Door into the Dark, was published.
1970–1984[edit source | editbeta]
For more details on on this part of Heaney's career, see his collections, Wintering Out, North, Field Work and Selected Poems 1965-1975.

After a spell as guest lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, he returned to Queen's University in 1971. In 1972, Heaney left his lectureship at Belfast and moved to Dublin in the Republic of Ireland, working as a teacher at Carysfort College. In 1972, Wintering Out was published, and over the next few years Heaney began to give readings throughout Ireland, Britain, and the United States. In 1975, Heaney published his fourth volume, North. Also published was Stations. He became Head of English at Carysfort College in Dublin in 1976. His next volume, Field Work, was published in 1979. Selected Poems 1965-1975 and Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–1978 were published in 1980. When Aosdána, the national Irish Arts Council, was established in 1981, Heaney was among those elected into its first group (he was subsequently elected a Saoi, one of its five elders and its highest honour, in 1997).[14] Also in 1981, he left Carysfort to become visiting professor at Harvard University, where he was affiliated with Adams House. He was awarded two honorary doctorates, from Queen's University and from Fordham University in New York City (1982). At the Fordham commencement ceremony in 1982, Heaney delivered the commencement address in a 46-stanza poem entitled Verses for a Fordham Commencement.

As he was born and educated in Northern Ireland, Heaney has felt the need to emphasise that he was Irish and not British. Following the success of the Field Day Theatre Company's production of Brian Friel's Translations, Heaney joined the company's expanded Board of Directors in 1981, when the company's founders Brian Friel and Stephen Rea decided to make the company a permanent group.[15]In 1984, his mother, Margaret, died.[16]
1985–1999[edit source | editbeta]
For more details on on this part of Heaney's career, see his works, Station Island, The Haw Lantern, The Cure at Troy and The Spirit Level.

Seamus and Marie Heaney at the Dominican Church, Kraków, Poland, 4 October 1996

Heaney was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University (formerly Visiting Professor) 1985–1997 and Ralph Waldo Emerson Poet in Residence at Harvard 1998–2006.[17] In 1986, Heaney received a Litt.D. from Bates College. His father, Patrick, died soon after publication of the 1987 volume, The Haw Lantern. In 1988, a collection of critical essays called The Government of the Tongue was published.

In 1989, Heaney was elected Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, which he held for a five-year term to 1994. The chair does not require residence in Oxford, and throughout this period he was dividing his time between Ireland and America. He also continued to give public readings; so well attended and keenly anticipated were these events that those who queued for tickets with such enthusiasm have sometimes been dubbed "Heaneyboppers", suggesting an almost teenybopper fanaticism on the part of his supporters.[18] Heaney was named an Honorary Patron of the University Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin and was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (1991).[19] In 1993, Heaney guest-edited The Mays Anthology, a collection of new writing from students at the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge. In 1990, The Cure at Troy, a play based on Sophocles's Philoctetes,[20] was published to much acclaim, followed by Seeing Things in 1991.

Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 for what the Nobel committee described as "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past".[21] He was on holiday in Greece with his wife when the news broke and no one, not even journalists or his own children, could find him until he appeared at Dublin Airport two days later, though an Irish television camera traced him to Kalamata. Asked how it felt having his name to the Irish Nobel pantheon featuring William Butler Yeats,George Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett, Heaney responded: "It's like being a little foothill at the bottom of a mountain range. You hope you just live up to it. It's extraordinary." He and Marie were immediately whisked straight from the airport to Áras an Uachtaráin for champagne with the then President Mary Robinson.[22]

Heaney's 1996 collection The Spirit Level won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and repeated the success with the release ofBeowulf: A New Translation.[23]
2000s[edit source | editbeta]

The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, which was officially opened at Queen's University Belfast in 2004
For more details on on this part of Heaney's career, see his works, The Burial at Thebes, Beacons of Bealtaine, District and Circle and Human Chain.

In 2000, Heaney was awarded an honorary doctorate and delivered the commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania.[24] In 2002, Heaney was awarded an honorary doctorate from Rhodes University and delivered a public lecture on "The Guttural Muse".[25]

In 2003, the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry was opened atQueen's University Belfast. It houses the Heaney Media Archive, a record of Heaney's entire oeuvre, along with a full catalogue of his radio and television presentations.[26] That same year Heaney, decided to lodge a substantial portion of his literary archive at Emory University, as a memorial to the work of William M. Chace, the university's recently retired president.[27][28] The Emory papers represented the largest repository of Heaney's work (1964–2003), donated to build their large existing archive from Irish writers including Yeats, Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson, Michael Longley and other members of the The Belfast Group.[29]

In 2003, when asked if there was any figure in popular culture who aroused interest in poetry and lyrics, Heaney praised rap artistEminem, saying "He has created a sense of what is possible. He has sent a voltage around a generation. He has done this not just through his subversive attitude but also his verbal energy."[30][31] He composed the poem "Beacons of Bealtaine" for the 2004 EU Enlargement. The poem was read by Heaney at a ceremony for the twenty-five leaders of the enlarged European Union arranged by the Irish EU presidency.

Heaney suffered a stroke from which he recovered in August 2006, but cancelled all public engagements for several months.[32] He was in County Donegal at the time on the occasion of the 75th birthday of Anne Friel, playwright Brian Friel's wife.[8][33] He read the works ofHenning Mankell, Donna Leon and Robert Harris while in hospital, and was visited at the time by Bill Clinton.[8][34]

Heaney's District and Circle won the 2006 T. S. Eliot Prize.[35] He became artist of honour in Østermarie, Denmark in 2008 and the Seamus Heaney Stræde (street) was named after him. In 2009, Heaney was presented with an Honorary-Life Membership award from the UCD Law Society, in recognition of his remarkable role as a literary figure.[36] Faber and Faber published Dennis O'Driscoll's bookStepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney in 2008; this has been described as the nearest thing to an autobiography of Heaney.[37] In 2009, Heaney was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. He spoke at the West Belfast Festival 2010 in celebration of his mentor, the poet and novelist Michael MacLaverty, who had helped Heaney to first publish his poetry.[38]
2010s[edit source | editbeta]

In 2010, Faber published Human Chain, Heaney's twelfth collection. Human Chain was awarded the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection, one of the only major poetry prizes Heaney had never previously won, despite having been twice shortlisted.[39][40] The book, published 44 years after the poet's first, was inspired in part by Heaney's stroke in 2006 which left him "babyish" and "on the brink". Poet and Forward judge Ruth Padel described the work as "a collection of painful, honest, and delicately weighted poems...a wonderful and humane achievement".[39] Writer Colm Tóibín described Human Chain as "his best single volume for many years, and one that contains some of the best poems he has written... is a book of shades and memories, of things whispered, of journeys into the underworld, of elegies and translations, of echoes and silences."[41] In October 2010, the collection was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.

Heaney was named one of "Britain's top 300 intellectuals" by The Observer in 2011, though the newspaper later published a correction acknowledging that "several individuals who would not claim to be British" had been featured, of which Heaney was one.[42] That same year, he contributed translations of Old Irish marginalia for Songs of the Scribe, an album by Traditional Singer in Residence of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin.[43]

In December 2011, he donated his personal literary notes to the National Library of Ireland.[44] Even though he admitted he would likely have earned a fortune by auctioning them, Heaney personally packed up the boxes of notes and drafts and, accompanied by his son Michael, delivered them to the National Library.[45]
Work[edit source | editbeta]

Heaney's books make up two-thirds of the sales of living poets in the UK.[3] His work often deals with the local surroundings of Ireland, particularly in Northern Ireland, where he was born. Speaking of his early life and education, he commented "I learned that my local County Derry experience, which I had considered archaic and irrelevant to 'the modern world' was to be trusted. They taught me that trust and helped me to articulate it."[46] Death of a Naturalist (1966) and Door into the Dark (1969) mostly focus on the detail of rural, parochial life.[46] Allusions to sectarian difference, widespread in Northern Ireland through his lifetime, can be found in his poems. His books Wintering Out (1973) and North (1975) seek to interweave commentary on 'The Troubles' with a historical context and wider human experience.[46] Whilst some critics have accused Heaney of being "an apologist and a mythologizer" of the violence, Blake Morrison suggests the poet "has written poems directly about the Troubles as well as elegies for friends and acquaintances who have died in them; he has tried to discover a historical framework in which to interpret the current unrest; and he has taken on the mantle of public spokesman, someone looked to for comment and guidance... Yet he has also shown signs of deeply resenting this role, defending the right of poets to be private and apolitical, and questioning the extent to which poetry, however 'committed,' can influence the course of history." Shaun O'Connell in the New Boston Review notes that "those who see Seamus Heaney as a symbol of hope in a troubled land are not, of course, wrong to do so, though they may be missing much of the undercutting complexities of his poetry, the backwash of ironies which make him as bleak as he is bright."[46] O'Connell notes in his Boston Review critique of Station Island: "Again and again Heaney pulls back from political purposes; despite its emblems of savagery, Station Island lends no rhetorical comfort to Republicanism. Politic about politics, Station Island is less about a united Ireland than about a poet seeking religious and aesthetic unity".[47] Heaney is described by critic Terry Eagleton as "an enlightened cosmopolitan liberal",[48] refusing to be drawn. Eagleton suggests: "When the political is introduced... it is only in the context of what Heaney will or will not say."[49] Reflections on what Heaney identifies as "tribal conflict",[49] favour the description of people's lives and their voices, drawing out the 'psychic landscape'. His collections often recall the assassination of his family members and close friends, lynchings and bombings. Colm Tóibín wrote, "throughout his career there have been poems of simple evocation and description. His refusal to sum up or offer meaning is part of his tact."[41] Heaney published “Requiem for the Croppies” on the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, a poem that commemorates the Irish rebels of 1798. He has read the poem to both Catholic and Protestant audiences in Ireland. He commented "To read ‘'Requiem for the Croppies'’ wasn't to say ‘up the IRA’ or anything. It was silence-breaking rather than rabble-rousing.”[50] He stated “You don't have to love it. You just have to permit it.” He turned down the offer of laureateship partly for political reasons, commenting "I’ve nothing against the Queen personally: I had lunch at the Palace once upon a time". He stated that his "cultural starting point" was "off centre". His most commonly cited political statement came in 1982 when he objected to being included in an anthology of British poetry, despite being of Northern Irish birth. He has lived in the Republic of Ireland since 1972 and claimed his Irish rather than British nationality, responding


“Be advised my passport's green.
No glass of ours was ever raised
to toast the Queen.”