Young poet ‘honoured’ to feature on Seamus Heaney mural

Internationally recognised as the greatest Irish poet since WB Yeats, Heaney was born in April 1939, the eldest of nine children, on a farm near Toomebridge, but as a child moved to the village of Bellaghy.

He was educated at St Columb’s College, Derry, and later at Queen’s University Belfast, before training as a teacher.

His first book, Death of a Naturalist, published in 1966, reflected his rural upbringing, but his career coincided with one of the bloodiest political upheavals of the 20th century, the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Further works would include Wintering Out (1972) and North (1975), right through to Station Island (1984), Seeing Things (1991), District and Circle (2006) and Human Chain (2010).

He was also the professor of poetry at Oxford University between 1989 and 1994.

Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 “for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past”.

He died in 2013 at the age of 74.