Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Irish people have a great love for language, a great feel for the pithy phrase and a quick wit. Even in the day-to-day speech of the ordinary man or woman in the street there is great poetry and colour. I believe this is due to our bilingual nature as a nation, and due to our rich cultural and literary heritage.

Ireland has always produced great poets and writers who have commanded the attention of the nation, and indeed of the world, and caused us all to marvel at their command of language, their craft and their creativity. We are all familiar with the names: poets such as Yeats, Art Mac Cumhaidh, Boland, and Ó Ríordáin; and writers such as Ó Criomhthain, Joyce, Beckett, and Swift. We have a literary tradition that can compare with any in the world, and we are justifiably proud and honoured to have had among us such masters of the English language and of the Irish language.

Though our great writers are legion, few are held in the same regard and with the same genuine affection as was Seamus Heaney. The phrase is used often in the media, but truly it can be said that following the passing of Seamus Heaney a nation mourned. A full house at Croke Park applauded with respect and admiration. Many thousands watched the funeral live and conversations in the street all ended up on the subject of our great loss.

Everyone had their own Heaney poem, perhaps their own line, which meant something very particular to them and had a personal significance. Many of us can remember being introduced to Heaney, perhaps the first time that we read Mid-Term Break. Those last few lines are so sudden and cruel, and visceral at the same time. Rarely has poetry carried such power and force.

It was felt deeply by the Irish people when he passed, because we all felt that we knew Seamus Heaney. He was a part of our lives and meant something to us all. Even those of us, who would not be avid readers of poetry, individually, but more specifically as a community, felt we had lost something special, a wealth of language, talent and joy. Truly he was a treasure.

Seamus Heaney was held in such affectionate regard by the Irish people because he was not exclusive, but inclusive. People felt as though his poetry was written for them because it was written for them. He wrote with that poetry that Irish people speak with. He spoke with an articulacy that was simple and comprehensible. With a great economy of language, he could write about complex emotions with simplicity and even in a colloquial way. While his art was equal in terms of skill and craft to anything being produced anywhere in the world, any person on the street could read his poems and understand and appreciate them.

Since his passing, words such as "earthy" have been used to such a point as to approach cliché. However, it reflects a certain aspect of Heaney's work. He wrote about ordinary things, often in a rural context, in a humble, simple and yet vivid way. He captured Irish country life, at different times and in different places, in a particularly poignant way. At a time when rural areas of Ireland face great pressures, his poetry reminds us of the great heritage, history and indeed poetry and beauty which exists in our rural communities.

He also cast a light on the realities of growing up in the North of Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s. He cast a light on the deep sectarian divisions which existed in Northern society, and underlined the distrust and suspicion which underwrote those divisions. He put the violence and conflict which erupted in the North in the late 1960s and early 1970s in its historical context and in terms of human experience in a way that was compassionate. He neither glorified nor simplified such violence or its causes. He chronicled the key events of his time, not from the perspective of the powerful or the influential, but from the perspective of the ordinary people, detailing their struggles, hardships and feelings.

In spite of his undoubted insight into, and understanding of, the Irish people, it would be a mistake to characterise him only as an Irish poet. He was a poet of the world, and his poetry and writing crossed all borders and spoke to something very deep in the human condition. Upon his passing, tributes flowed not alone from Dublin and Derry, but from the whole world, from the literary world and from wider circles, with former US presidents and the head of the European Commission acknowledging their regard and admiration for him.

His simple but artful use of language and the intense feeling and passion in the poems made him one of the most well-known poets on the planet. Among poets he was one of the most well-regarded and respected, not only as a poet but as a human being. Andrew Motion, the great English poet, believed that we had lost "a great poet, a wonderful writer about poetry and a person of truly exceptional grace and intelligence". This has come through in every tribute paid to him as well as his humanity, kindness and his absolute decency and patience.

I did not have the fortune to meet Seamus Heaney in person at any stage but I know the regard in which he is held within the artistic community. Recently, I attended an Arts Council bursary showcase in Merrion Square at which Seamus was originally to speak. Although an excellent event, it was naturally tinged with sadness because so many people at the event knew him intimately and had worked with him. The evening began with his poetry, and as much power as it ordinarily has, it had so much more on that occasion. He would have been proud to see such talent and so many new artists coming through, whether in literature, the visual arts, music or otherwise.

He has bequeathed us a rich legacy and I am hopeful that it is in good hands. Our nation was so proud on his winning the Nobel Prize in 1995. The reaction was more like a sporting victory than a Nobel Prize. We felt as though the world had finally discovered what had given such pleasure to us and he truly became one of the great international poets.

He marked an important moment in Irish poetry. Along with others, he recaptured the soul of Irish poetry, dug deep into our tradition and heritage and drew a link from now until then. The poem, Is Mairg Nár Chrean le Maitheas Saoghalta, by Daithí Ó Bruadair, the 17th century Cork poet, underscores the death of the old Irish order, mourns how nobility and poets had been reduced to working the land in penury and how the culture and artistry of a generation previous was being lost. There is a certain parallel between this and Heaney's poem Digging. The land and rural life is central. He thinks of his father and generations before him who worked with the land, often in hardship but always with dignity. Heaney writes:

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I'll dig with it.

Many generations after the poets were reduced to peasants and a tradition nearly lost, Heaney grasps the pen and the tradition and reasserts their dignity and importance. The nobility and power of poetry is brought to the fore not as high art away from the people but as part of a living breathing tradition that is as central to Ireland and her story as is the land. There is a phrase in Irish about the decline of Gaelic Ireland, trí ghlúin ó rí go rámhainn, three generations from kings to the spade. In Diggingit is perhaps appropriate to consider that it was trí ghlúin ó rámhainn go peann, three generations from spade to pen. This was his strength and his depth. He was in awe of and indebted to our traditions, culture and language and rooted in them. Thus he brought such insight and passion to bear in reflecting the Irish people and life. Moreover, he brought those traditions with him, looked beyond them and built upon them. That is how he became a poet who spoke to the world and to the universal nature of the human condition. Men of such courage, ability, compassion and insight are rare and we may consider ourselves blessed to have lived in his time. To put it simply, tá laoch ar lár.

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