Award of Nobel Prize for Literature 1995
Dear Seamus Heaney,
Let me now remind you of your own Declaration of Independence – Poetry can never be reduced to a political, historical or moral issue. In the final resort poetry is its own reality. Ever since Death of a Naturalist I have admired the way in which you turn your back on the systematisers, to defend instead poetic creativity as a free, natural, biological process. We all admire your revealing and compelling images and rhythms, we are gladdened by your quest for sacred wells and the sudden eruption of Beauty. I am happy to convey to you, on behalf of the Swedish Academy, our warmest congratulations on the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1995 and to invite you to receive the Prize from the hands of His Majesty the King.
From the presentation speech by Mr. Östen Sjöstrand, Member of the Swedish Academy
Approaching Church Island
Marshy water meadows lie between the visitor to Church Island and the Strand at Lough Beg. A beautiful and romantic place, this landscape features in many of the poet's earlier works. The poem The Strand at Lough Beg is an elegy to his murdered cousin Colum McCartney, in which he writes of "the lowland clays and waters of Lough Beg/ Church Island's spire,its soft treeline of yew.