Seamus Heaney
SH born on April 19, the eldest of nine children, to Margaret and Patrick Heaney, at the family farm, Mossbawn, about 30 miles northwest of Belfast in County Derry.
SH wins a scholarship to St. Columb's College, a Catholic boarding school situated in the city of Derry.
Attends Queen's University, Belfast.
Takes a teacher's certificate at St. Joseph's College in Belfast.
Becomes a lecturer at St. Joseph's College.
Becomes a lecturer at Queen's University. Marries Marie Devlin.
Death of a Naturalist. Son, Michael, is born.
Son, Christopher, is born.
Door Into The Dark.
Visiting lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley.
Wintering Out. Moves to the Republic of Ireland.
Daughter, Catherine Ann, is born.
Begins teaching at Carysfort College in Dublin.
Moves his family to Dublin.
North. Gains international fame.
Selected Poems 1965-1975. Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978.
The Field Day Group is established by playwright Brian Friel and actor Stepehen Rea. Their intent is to create a space, a "fifth province," where art looks beyond the factionalism that was prevalent in Irish politics at the time (Orange/Green, British/Irish, Unionist/Nationalist, Protestant/Catholic, etc.). Their work begins in Derry, in Northeren Ireland, but addresses both Eire and NI. Before their first performance, SH becomes a member of the Board of Directors.
Becomes visiting professor at Harvard.
Station Island. Named Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. Mother dies.
The Haw Lantern.
The Government of the Tongue.
The Place of Writing. Becomes Professor of Poetry at Oxford University.
New Selected Poems 1966-1987.
Seeing Things.
Wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures.
The Spirit Level.
Awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from UNC-Chapel Hill, where he is the commencement speaker
Beowulf: A New Translation. Spends 10 weeks on the New York Times Best-Seller List.
Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry opens at Queens University, Belfast. SH places a substantial portion of his literary archive at Emory University.
District and Circle is named one of the 10 best books of the decade.
August: While in County Donegal celebrating the 75th birthday of Anne Friel (wife of Brian Friel, above), SH suffers a stroke.
The Human Chain. Many of the poems collected here are about his experiences after his stroke, which left him "babyish" and "on the brink."
30 August: SH dies in Blackrock Clinic, Dublin. After a fall outside a restaurant in Dublin, he entered the hospital for a medical procedure, but died at 7:30 the following morning before it took place.
His funeral is held in Donnybrook, Dublin, on the morning of 2 September 2013, and he is buried in the evening at his home village of Bellaghy, in the same graveyard as his parents, young brother, and other family members. His son Michael revealed at the funeral mass that his father texted his final words, "Noli timere" (Latin: "Be not afraid"), to his wife, Marie, minutes before he died.
The day after his death, a crowd of 81,553 spectators applauds Heaney for three minutes at an All-Ireland Gaelic football semi-final match on 1 September. His funeral is broadcast live the following day on RTÉ television and radio and is streamed internationally at RTÉ's website.
SH's translation of Book VI of Vergil's Aeneid is published. It follows the hero, Aeneas, on his descent into the underworld. In Stepping Stones, a book of interviews conducted by Dennis O'Driscoll, Heaney acknowledged the significance of the poem to his writing, noting that "there's one Virgilian journey that has indeed been a constant presence, and that is Aeneas's venture into the underworld. The motifs in Book VI have been in my head for years — the golden bough, Charon's barge, the quest to meet the shade of the father."
