WATCH: A montage of Seamus Heaney reading 'Digging'

The Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet has died at the age of 74

Heaney
(Image credit: YouTube)

Irish poet Seamus Heaney, a Nobel Prize winner who published more than a dozen major poetry collections and translations over the course of his lifetime, died on Friday. He was 74.

But Heaney remained characteristically humble and generous; as his health declined in 2011, he personally packed up his collection of literary papers, which are estimated to be worth millions, and donated them to the National Library of Ireland in Dublin.

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In 2009, the BBC Northern Ireland cut together this montage of Heaney reading "Digging," one of his earliest acclaimed poems, at a series of appearances throughout his lifetime. "Digging" was included in Heaney's first major collection, 1966's widely acclaimed Death of a Naturalist, which offers 34 poems about growing up on a farm in Northern Ireland. "His words give us the soil-reek of Ireland, the colorful violence of a childhood farm in Derry," said a critic in The Spectator at the time.

Scott Meslow is the entertainment editor for TheWeek.com. He has written about film and television at publications including The Atlantic, POLITICO Magazine, and Vulture.