Seamus Heaney, 1996 (photo)

Seamus Heaney ( born 13 April 1939) Eminent Irish poet, playwright and translator. Won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (1968), the E. M. Forster Award (1975), the PEN Translation Prize (1985), the Golden Wreath of Poetry (2001), the T. S. Eliot Prize (2006) and two Whitbread Prizes (1996 and 1999), among others. His work mainly deals with the local surroundings of Ireland, particularly in Northern Ireland, where he was born. His most recent collection of poems is Human Chain (2010.) In 1989, Heaney was elected Professor of Poetry, for five years, at the University of Oxford.