SEAMUS HEANEY’S EARLY WORK: Poetic Responsibility and the Troubles

Discusses a critical element in the early poetry of Seamus Heaney: the question of poetic duty and responsibility, with specific reference to the poetry he published before moving from Ulster to the Irish Republic. The work demonstrates how his first four poetry collections exhibit a progression in how the poet, after coming to grips with his artistic vocation, finally discovers the means by which to address the terrible events that afflicted Northern Ireland at the time.