Irish poet Nobel winner Seamus Heaney dies at 74

 Seamus Heaney, Ireland's foremost poet who won the Nobel literature prize in 1995, has died after a half-century exploring the wild beauty of Ireland and the political torment within the nation's soul. He was 74.

Heaney's family and publisher, Faber & Faber, say in a statement that Heaney died Friday in a Dublin hospital.

The Northern Ireland-born Heaney was widely considered Ireland's greatest poet since William Butler Yeats. Over a half-century career he wrote 13 collections of poetry, two plays, four prose works on the process of poetry, and many other works.