Seamus Justin Heaney was born in 1939 in County Derry in Northern Ireland. He grew up in the country, on a farm. He attended the local school and in 1951 went as a border to St Columb's College. In 1956 he went on a scholarship to Queen's University, Belfast and graduated with a first class degree in English Language and Literature in 1961. Seamus Heaney began to write in 1962, publishing first in Irish magazines. After a year as a postgraduate at a college of education, and a year teaching in a secondary modern school, he was appointed to the staff of St Joseph's College of Education.…