Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1995, died in Dublin on Friday after a brief illness, according to a statement issued on behalf of his family. He was 74.

The New York Times reports:

Heaney was born on a family farm in Londonderry in Northern Ireland but, as a Catholic and a nationalist, chose to live in Dublin. His poems often mined the images of his childhood — the peat bogs, small towns and potato farms — and, in collections like 1975’s “North,” delved into the sectarian violence that was ripping the North apart, exploring its sorrows and causes, though he avoided becoming a spokesman for the Republican cause.

In addition to being a poet, Heaney was a public writer, translator, and broadcaster. He published more than a dozen books between 1966 and 2010.