Updated 22.54

Heaney pictured in Dublin in 1995. Eamonn Farrell Eamonn Farrell

IRISH POET AND playwright Seamus Heaney has died at the age of 74.

Glowing tributes are being paid to the Derry-born former teacher, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

Many people have been and continue to be introduced to Heaney’s work through the Junior and Leaving Cert programmes.

Here are a few favourite memories. Please share your own in the comments section below...

Mid Term Break

@DancingAtDiscos @DancingAtDiscos

Digging

YouTube/Petebky

When All The Others Were Away At Mass

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

The Tollund Man

A-w-i-p A-w-i-p

Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap…

What were your favourites? How about Clearances, or maybe Bogland? Share in the comments section…

Originally published 12.01pm

Videos: Seamus Heaney on life, love and poetry>