Seamus Heaney

There will be tributes from writers more accomplished and qualified for the job than I after the death of Seamus Heaney, the pre-eminent poet in the British Isles over the last few decades. On the other hand, one can hardly let the sad day go by without acknowledging it.
The position of Northern Ireland in poetry in our time was ostensibly achieved by a generation of poets that grew up after him and around him. If our major poets have recently been identified with provincial areas rather than the metropolis or Oxford and Cambridge, none has been as evident as the talent to come out of Ireland.
Seamus Heaney was perhaps best known for his early poems on archaeology, the icons of primitive violence found preserved in north European mud, and his version of Beowulf. However, for me his poetry was remarkable for the light and lightness of touch it displayed. There was a generosity of spirit and humanity that was expressed with a physical texture and music in his language that was his own, that no other could imitate or even try to.
Those qualities came directly from a personality who above all valued frienship, family and the Human Chain that gave the title of his last book of poems. It would go without saying that he leaves a considerable gap in contemporary poetry.