THE WITNESS OF ATROCITY IN HEANEY`S SELECTED POEMS

Abstract

The research investigates the power of Seamus Heaney`s poetry in denouncing human atrocity. His poetry turns to be a record of human trauma. He lives the pain of a quarter-century Secterian and political violence in Northern Ireland, his native ground. He does not only make the wounds of his people speak, but also he selects to be a listener to the wounds. He is qualified to have the responsibility of re-opening the buried pain because of being a sufferer and a witness of this atrocity. Heaney gives voice to the silent victims and grants them an opportunity to reshape their trauma to the world in his poetry, thus every poem carries different story of suffering. This is part of Heaney`s commitment as a poet to response to other trauma to present healing for human injuries and experience for preventing such trauma from occurring again. These traumatic experiences in his poems are gathered from different lands and century to prove the human pain is one and poetry which is an accurate reflection of life should mould the pain, fear, betray, violence and shock which are the triggers of man trauma. The research investigates this under the illumination of the theory of trauma.