A selective bibliography of open access articles on Seamus Heaney, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Authors of Web Sites
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Andrews, Elmer, ed. Publisher's blurb for The Poetry of Seamus Heaney (Columbia Univ. Press, 2000)
Bolton, Jonathan. "'Customary rhythms': Seamus Heaney and the rite of poetry." "My chief concern in this essay is with the manner in which Heaney's three to four part station poems have come to serve as the formal equivalent of a liturgical rite." In Papers on Lang. and Lit., Spring 2001
Boly, John. "Following Seamus Heaney's 'Follower': Toward a Performative Criticism." A reading of "The Follower." Twentieth Century Literature, Fall, 2000
Booth, J. The turf cutter and the nine-to-five man: Heaney, Larkin, and "the spiritual intellect's great work." Considers the mutual dislike of each other's work of Seamus Heaney and Philip Larkin, in Twentieth Century Literature, Winter, 1997
Corcoran, Neil. The state we're in Seamus Heaney reworks Sophocles' struggle between principle and pragmatism to great effect in The Burial at Thebes, says Neil Corcoran. In The Guardian, May 1, 2004
Corcoran, Neil. Review of Poets of Modern Ireland: Text, Context, Intertext. By Neil Corcoran. (Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1999) in SAMLA, reviewed by Garland Kimmer
Corcoran, Neil. Publisher's blurb for Neil Corcoran's A Student's Guide to Seamus Heaney (Faber, 1986)
Curtis, Tony. Publisher's blurb for The Art of Seamus Heaney (IPG, 1982)
Frazier, Adrian. "Anger and nostalgia: Seamus Heaney and the ghost of the father." Long and cogent article on anger and its transformation in Heaney's poetry, and his use of the past. Recommended. In Eire-Ireland:Journal of Irish Studies, Fall-Winter, 2001
Heaney, Seamus. Influences: The power of T. S. Eliot Seamus Heaney writes about the influence of T.S. Eliot on poetry in the 1950s, in the Boston Review, 1989
Hobsbaum, Philip. An interview with the British "outsider" Philip Hobsbaum who in 1963 organized The Group in Belfast
Longley, Edna. Poetry and the Peace Process. An interview with Edna Longley. From Books and Writing, on Radio National, 7/24/05
Matthews, Steven. A substantial introduction to Seamus Heaney from the Literary Encyclopedia, 20 September 2002. On Eleven Poems (1965)
McDonald, Peter. A review of Seamus Heaney's Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001, in Poetry Review
McDonald, Peter. Chapter 1 of Mistaken Identities: Poetry and Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press, 1997, paperback 2000) First chapter from a standard work, covers Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, and Paul Muldoon among others.
McSweeney, Kerry. "Literary Allusion and the Poetry of Seamus Heaney." Discusses specific allusions in some of Heaney's poems, judging them as sometimes successful and sometimes not. In Style, Spring, 1999
Molino, Michael R. Publisher's blurb for Questioning Tradition, Language, and Myth: The Poetry of Seamus Heaney
Moore, Andrew. A study guide for Seamus Heaney contains 2-3 paragraph discussions of the following poems: Storm on the Island, Perch, Blackberry-Picking, Death of a Naturalist, Digging, Follower, At a Potato Digging. From Universal Teacher
Niekrasz, Andrzej "I will live content elsewhere": The Importance of Exile in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney. Winner of the WW Norton prize for best undergraduate essay 1998.
OBrien, Eugene. "At the Frontier of Language: Literature, Theory, Politics." OBrien discusses Heaney's early poem "Broagh." "The relationship between literature, theory and politics is one that is often seen as at best, tangential, and at worst, non-existent. This paper will demonstrate how the linguistics of poetry can be successfully interrogated by the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, and will go on to show how this deconstruction becomes operative in terms of analysing the political situation in Northern Ireland." In Minerva, an internet journal, 1 (1996)
OBrien, Eugene. Publisher's blurb for Seamus Heaney: Searches for Answers (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2003)
OBrien, Eugene. Publisher's blurb for Seamus Heaney and the Place of Writing (Univ. Press of Fla., 2003)
Parker, Michael. Review of Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet In Contemporary Review, Nov, 1993 by John McGurk
Paulin, Tom. "The Influence of Robert Frost on Irish Poetry." From meeting held December 6, 2002, in Columbia University Seminar in Irish Studies
Pellegrino, Joe. Seamus Heaney's Proleptic Elegies orig. pub. in Kentucky Philological Review 13 (1998): 17-23
Pellegrino, Joe. "Seamus Heaney: A Critical Introduction." In The Internet Poetry Archive, ibiblio.org. 1996
Purdy, Anthony. The bog body as mnemotope: nationalist archaeologies in Heaney and Tournier. Mnemotope discussed "as a chronotopic motif manifesting the presence of the past, the conscious or unconscious memory traces of a more or less distant period in the life of a culture or, metaphorically, an individual. Of course, the mnemotope might come in many guises and be inflected by attitudinal values ranging from nostalgia and melancholy through desire, obsession and remembrance to horror and denial. Its preferred genre might be pastoral or testimony, but it might function equally well in western or film noir, historical romance, epic or ghost story. In intertextual terms its potential range is vast, running the gamut from homage and remake to parody and pastiche." - Seamus Heaney, Michel Tournier - Critical Essay, in Style, Spring, 2002
Stefanovic, Suzana. Seamus Heaney: The Poet and His Tradition on the influence of the English literary tradition, especially Wordsworth, on Heaney, in Linguistics and Literature, Vol. 2, No. 8 (2001)
Tobin, Daniel. A review of Passage to the Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney. By Daniel Tobin. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. In SAMLA 65-1, review by Jonathan Hufstader
Tobin, Daniel. Publisher's blurb Passage To The Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney (Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1998)
Tracey, Robert. Briefly defends Heaney against charge of "verbal affectations" explicates sources of language and imagery. "Heaney's 'Tollund Man,' and similar poems in North, are partly based on his reading of The Bog People by the Danish archaeologist, P. Glob, a book Heaney has often mentioned in interviews." NYRB letter, 5/15/80
Triggs, Jeffery Alan. "Hurt into Poetry: The Political Verses of Seamus Heaney and Robert Bly," by Jeffery Alan Triggs, orig. pub. in The New Orleans Review 19.3-4 (Fall & Winter 1992): 162-73
Vendler, Helen. Publisher's blurb for Helen Vendler's study, Seamus Heaney, from Harvard Univ. Press
Vendler, Helen. A review of Helen Vendler's Seamus Heaney. (Harvard Univ. Press, 1998) Reviewed by Jonathan Allison in South Atlantic MLA Review
Vendler, Helen. A review of Vendler's Seamus Heaney. In Commonweal, Nov 6, 1998 by Daria Donnelly
Welch, Robert. "Faultlines, limits, transgressions: a theme-cluster in late twentieth-century Irish poetry," discusses poetry of John Montague, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, and others, in Eire-Ireland:Journal of Irish Studies, Spring-Summer, 2003
Williams, Kirsty. Ambivalent Subject Positions: "Redressing Seamus Heaney's Early Poetry" on whether the poetry expresses a unified self. In Ecologa No. 3 (Autumn 2003)
A NYTimes special section on Seamus Heaney includes Times reviews of many of his books (reviewers include Helen Vendler and Robert Pinsky) and Times articles about Heaney (free but requires one-time registration)
The Seamus Heaney page at the Nobel Prize web site contains a brief biography and his 1995 Nobel prize acceptance lecture
An overviews of Seamus Heaney from The Guardian (UK) which includes links to many Guardian articles by or about Heaney
'Tony Curtis, Seamus Heaney and Confidential Poetry' by Anne Stevenson, in Planet Magazine152
Review of Electric Light by Seamus Heaney (Faber) by Casterton, Julie, in Ambit 165 (2001)
On the Mead Bench Review of Seamus Heaney: Beowulf. London: Faber by Nick Gammage in Thumbscrew 15 (Winter/Spring 2000)
Shaking the dust bag On The School Bag, edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes (Faber). By Smith, Laurie. Orig. in Magma 10(Summer 1997)
Biographical introduction to Seamus Heaney from Between the Lines
A biography of Seamus Heaney from Books and Writers, Kuusankoski Public Library, Finland
The 5-Minute Interview: Seamus Heaney, Poet and Nobel Laureate - in The Independent, (London), Jun 3, 2005 by Matthew Beard
Catching the heart off guard: the generous vision of Seamus Heaney - Irish poet, in Commonweal, May 17, 1996 by Suzanne Keen
An introduction to Seamus Heaney from the Gale Group
Seamus Heaney praises Eminem "American rap star Eminem has been praised by leading poet Seamus Heaney for his 'verbal energy'". BBC News, 30 June, 2003
Brief website for the Seamus Heaney Summer School at the Institute of Irish Studies
A lesson plan for some poems by Seamus Heaney aimed at high school students, from the BBC
A very brief introduction to Seamus Heaney from the Academy of American Poets
Complete list of Seamus Heaney's published books, from the Literary Encyclopedia
Secondary bibliography for Seamus Heaney from a class on Twentieth Century English Lit. at Oxford
A primary and selected secondary bibliography for Seamus Heaney from his Nobel web site
On the acquisition of Seamus Heaney papers at Emory University
On the acquisition of the Leonard L. Milberg '53 Collection of Irish Poetry by Princeton, press release 4/10/98
Overview of the Irish conflict beginning with the partition of Ireland in 1921, from the BBC
Conflict Archive on the Internet which contains information and source material on 'the Troubles' and politics in Northern Ireland from 1968 to the present
A roundtable of Irish authors tackles the topic "[James]Joyce. Yeats. Beckett. Wilde. What is it about Ireland that's produced such a disproportionate share of great writers?" From Authors on the Web, 2002
An easy-read article on the Bog People helpful for explaining many of the references in Heaney's poems, includes pictures of Tollund Man and Grauballe Man
A web site on peatlands in Northern Ireland "Our peatlands are a history book. Peat is renowned for preserving the organic and inorganic remains of settlements, including tombs, farms, trackways, implements and bog bodies." UK Environment and Heritage Service
Details on the Belfast Group provided by Emory Univ., which now owns many original Group sheets. Includes an overview of the Group's history and a catalog of the sheets
Web site for The International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures an actively maintained site that contains a wealth of information and news on exhibitions, journals, conferences, and more
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