Once again Irish poetry has been honored. The most important Eliot Prize in poetry has announced its results. Seamus Heaney won the 2006 Eliot Prize for his 2005 collection of poems "District and Circle". Heaney's path to the award was not a smooth one. Another strong opponent was also the Irish poet Paul Muldoon, professor of poetry at Oxford University, but in the end, Heaney won the 10,000-pound prize. Leary Elliott came in person to present the award.
Critics generally believe that the newly published "Reincarnation", although it revolves around daily life on the London Underground line, is full of darkness, prophecy and danger. His poems depict a conflicted world. Avoid a world where war is everywhere. Eliot Prize jury chairman Sean O'Brien spoke highly of Heaney's work, calling it a "delightful work".
Heaney himself did not attend the award, but after receiving the news of the award, he said that he felt very honored, not only because of T. S. Eliot’s name, but also because of his respect for previous winners and that year. respect from other candidates. Since its establishment in 1993, the Eliot Prize has become an important agenda item in literature, especially poetry. Previous winners include Alice Oswald, Ted Hughes, Les Murray and others. Heaney's award did not come as a surprise to the poetry community at home. Poet Wang Jiaxin said that when Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he used Heaney's poems to express his hope that the success would be "like potatoes being dug out of the ground when they are ripe." He said that Heaney is not only an internationally recognized great poet, but also a poet generally recognized, respected and paid attention to by the domestic poetry circle. According to him, Heaney was born on the same day that Yeats died, and is also recognized as the most important poet in Ireland after Yeats. He is a son of a peasant family, and his works have always focused on exploring life experiences.