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30th Aug 2013

Nobel Prize winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney dies aged 74

One of Ireland’s finest poets and playwrights and a Nobel Prize award winner, Seamus Heaney, has passed away age 74.

Conor Heneghan

One of Ireland’s finest poets and playwrights and a Nobel Prize award winner, Seamus Heaney, has passed away age 74.

The Derry-born poet, who is believed to have been suffering from ill-health of late, is widely regarded as one of Ireland’s greatest ever poets and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

Having started off his career as a schoolteacher, Heaney also wrote a number of plays but it is for his distinguished contribution to poetry he will be best remembered.

As well as serving as both the Oxford and Harvard Professor of Poetry, he received a number of awards for his work throughout his career, including two Whitbread Prizes in 1996 and 1999 and a Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award just last year, while he was made a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres in 1996.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.

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