Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet who won the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature, died shortly after 7:30 am on Friday in Dublin, according to the Irish Times. His death followed a short illness.
Heaney was one of the world's most well-known poets. For much of his career, he taught half of the year at Harvard and had a strong presence in the U.S. literary world. He was widely regarded as the most important Irish poet since fellow Nobel-laureate W.B. Yeats.
Heaney's first book, Death of a Naturalist (1966) established him as a writer deeply tied to the Irish landscape and passionate yet conflicted about the violence of Irish politics. Other major books include Field Work (1979) and the retrospective collection Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996 (1998). His last collection was 2010's Human Chain. He was published by Faber & Faber in the U.K. and FSG in the U.S.
