SOURCE: A conversation in The Economist, Vol. 319, June 22, 1991, pp. 98-102.

[In the following interview, Heaney discusses his philosophy of language and the influence his father and his home in Ireland have had on his poetry.]

Seamus Heaney is one of the best known and most widely read of modern poets. His latest collection of poems, Seeing Things, has been both praised and damned: the Spectator has called it "a glass precipice without toehold". In conversation recently, he explained himself to The Economist.

[The Economist]: You were raised a Catholic in County Derry, one of nine children, and your father was a cattle dealer. Were words revered in your household?

[Heaney]: Not in any conscious way at all, no. There was no self-consciousness about the use of language. But there was an unself-conscious relish of excellence in it. I wouldn't say this was particular to the family. It was...