Irish - Poet | April 13, 1939 - August 30, 2013
Poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead.
Seamus Heaney
PoetryBreadDeadBreak
I think that water is immediately interesting. It's just, as an element, it is full of life. It is associated with origin; it is bright - it reflects you.
LifeWaterThinkInterestingYou
Poems that come swiftly are usually the ones that you keep.
YouKeepComePoemsSwiftly
It is very true to say that work done by writers is quite often an attempt to give solid expression to that which is bothering them... They feel they have got it right if they express the stress.
WorkStressFeelDoneSayTrue
I think childhood is, generally speaking, a preparation for disappointment.
ChildhoodPreparationDisappointment
I don't do as many readings as I used to. There was a time when I was on the road a lot more, at home in Ireland, in Britain, in Canada and the States, a time when I had more stamina and appetite for it.
HomeTimeRoadCanadaMoreUsed
You yourself don't have to be shaken by mortal danger in order to feel your mortality.
YourselfFeelYouOrderDangerYour
Memory has always been fundamental for me. In fact, remembering what I had forgotten is the way most of the poems get started.
MemoryMeWayAlwaysRemembering
There's never going to be a united Ireland, you know.
YouKnowNeverUnitedGoingIreland
Every time you read a poem aloud to yourself in the presence of others, you are reading it into yourself and them. Voice helps to carry words farther and deeper than the eye.
TimeWordsYourselfEyeReadingYou
I think of Dermot Healy as the heir to Patrick Kavanagh.
ThinkI ThinkHeir
I have always thought of poems as stepping stones in one's own sense of oneself. Every now and again, you write a poem that gives you self-respect and steadies your going a little bit farther out in the stream. At the same time, you have to conjure the next stepping stone because the stream, we hope, keeps flowing.
HopeTimeThoughtYouStoneNow
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