Two Lorries

“Two Lorries” by Irish poet Seamus Heaney, first appeared in his collection The Spirit Level in 1996. It blends modern free verse language with traditional poetry form. This poem was released one year after Heaney received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 and was actively teaching, lecturing, and publishing — this period represents the height of his literary career. One year later, Heaney would go on to be elected to the prestigious Irish arts council Aosdána. The poem explores, through two different chronological lenses, the horror of the Irish nationalist conflict that ran from the 1960s to the late 1990s; the aftereffects of the conflict are still reverberating today. Through it, the reader gets an intimate, personal glimpse into the poet’s childhood and his later experiences living on the Irish border.

Poet Biography

Seamus Heaney is a renowned poet originally from Northern Ireland, though he spent much of his life living in Dublin. He was born on April 13, 1939, and lived until August 30, 2013, aged 74. Heaney’s work has been widely read on several continents, studied in school systems, and lauded as being both exquisite in literary value and highly accessible to the average reader.