Allegorical works by Seamus Heaney: Storm on the Island.

Seamus Heaney /ʃeiˈmas hi:ˈni/ was born on April 13, 1939, on a farm in Castledawson, County Derry, Northern Ireland, the eldest of eight children. In 1963, he began teaching at St. Joseph’s College in Belfast. Here he began to write, joining a poetry workshop with Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, and others under the guidance of Philip Hobsbaum. In 1965 he married Marie Devlin, and in 1966 year he published his first book of poetry, Death of a Naturalist. His other poetry includes Door into the Dark (1969), Wintering Out (1972), North (1979), Selected Poems 1965−1975 (1980), Station Island (1984), The Haw Lantern (1987), New Selected Poems 1966−1987 (1990) and Seeing Things (1991). In 1999 he published a new translation of the Old English heroic poem Beowulf.

Seamus Heaney is a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1989 to 1994. In 1995 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Heaney has lived in Dublin since 1976. Since 1981 he has spent part of each year teaching at Harvard University, where he is a Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory. Writing about Heaney in 1968, Jim Hunter, said:

“His own involvement does not exclude us: there are few private references, and the descriptive clarity of his writing makes it easy to follow... Heaney’s world is a warm, even optimistic one: his tone is that of traditional sanity and humanity.”

Storm on the Island considers the ideas of isolation and living so close to nature. But mainly it depicts the destructive powers of nature, amplified for the island-dweller. Heaney refers to three of the elements − earth, water and air. The poem challenges the idea that island life is idyllic − the sea is not “company” but like a cat, seemingly tame, yet apt to turn “savage” and spit. At the end of the poem comes the irony − we are fearful of “empty air”, or a “huge nothing”. So the poem appears to question whether our fears are real or imaginary (of course, physicists and meteorologists know that air is not “a huge nothing”). Heaney uses a series of military metaphors: the wind (like a fighter-bomber) “dives and strafes” while space is a “salvo” and air bombards (a metaphor from artillery or, more aptly here, naval gunnery).

The poem is written in iambic pentameter lines − mostly blank verse, but with half-rhyming couplets at the beginning and end. The poem opens confidently, explaining why the island dwellers trust in their preparations − but when the storm breaks, they can do nothing but “sit tight”.