The Nobel Prize-winner is one of Ireland’s greatest minds. His work at the time of The Troubles was incredible.
BBC2 will air a feature-length documentary about the life and work of Seamus Heaney, the beloved Nobel Prize-winner.
Directed by Adam Low and Dermot Lavery, Seamus Heaney and the music of what happens will feature interviews with Heaney’s wife Marie and his three children. The family will be talking about their family life and they’ll also read some of the poems that he wrote for them.
For for the first time ever, his four surviving brothers will be talking about their childhood and the shared experiences that inspired so many of Heaney’s finest poems. In terms of its narrative, the new film considers on the full arc of Heaney’s life, his relationships with family and fellow writers, and on the poems themselves.
In terms of a synopsis, the BBC website states: “Born into a farming family in rural Northern Ireland, Seamus Heaney became the finest poet of his generation and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, but his career coincided with one of the bloodiest political upheavals of the 20th century, the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
“Six years after Heaney’s death in 2013, his wife Marie and his children talk about their family life and read some of the poems he wrote for them, and for the first time his four brothers remember their childhood and the shared experiences that inspired many of his finest poems.”
A new film about the Nobel-prize winning poet Seamus Heaney will be shown on BBC Two tomorrow. Tonight there's a special preview at the centre dedicated to him in his home town of Bellaghy Our arts correspondent Robbie Meredith reports pic.twitter.com/anQ2E9v1ns
— BBC Newsline (@bbcnewsline) November 29, 2019
After his first collection of poems, Death Of A Naturalist, was published by Faber & Faber in 1966, Heaney was heralded as a major new talent and this culminated in 1995 when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Born into a farming family in Derry, Heaney lived in a community which actively campaigned for civil rights. A large part of his work coincided with, and frequently reflected, the turmoil that was unfolding during The Troubles.
For example, his poems about the preserved Iron Age bodies found in bogs in Denmark and Ireland say as much about the situation in Northern Ireland as it did about the world in which they were executed or sacrificed.
Elsewhere, Mid-Term Break is a poem that nearly every Irish person has learned as part of their Leaving Cert.
Heaney never allowed himself to become a spokesman for the Republican cause, despite pressure to do so as the situation in Northern Ireland became increasingly violent and oppressive.
Identifying as Irish rather than British, Heaney moved to Wicklow in 1972.
Admired and loved far beyond the UK and Ireland, Heaney’s work inspired a whole generation of people and artists alike. He was also a professor at Harvard in the 1980s and 90s.
He sadly passed away in 2013 at the age of 74.
Seamus Heaney and the music of what happens airs at 9:45pm on BBC Two on Saturday, 30 November.
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