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Nowadays, what an award gives is a sense of solidarity with the poetry guild, as it were: sustenance coming from the assent of your peers on the judging panel.

Seamus Heaney

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Seamus Heaney
Age: 74 †
Born: 1939
Born: April 13
Died: 2013
Died: August 30
Actor
Author
Linguist
Playwright
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Seamus Justin Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Judging
Assent
Poetry
Panel
Gives
Sustenance
Coming
Award
Sense
Solidarity
Giving
Nowadays
Peers
Guild
Awards
Guilds

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Irish readers, British readers, American readers: is it odd that I haven't a clue about how differently they react? Or better say, I cannot find the words to describe my hunch about them.
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So hope for a great sea-change on the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore is reachable from here. Believe in miracles and cures and healing wells.
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The next move is always the test.
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I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.
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At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure.
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But even so, none of the news of these world-spasms entered me as terror.
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There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you.
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Then as the years went on and my listening became more deliberate, I would climb up on an arm of our big sofa to get my ear closer to the wireless speaker.
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I've always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward.
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Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.
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