In his magnificent Nobel Prize acceptance speech, the late Irish poet, playwright, and translator Seamus Heaney (April 13, 1939–August 30, 2013) asserted that the task of poetry is to “persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness.” Heaney himself was an uncommon master of this art of persuasion — a mastery which wife-and-husband filmmaker duo Elaine McMillon Sheldon and Kerrin Sheldon celebrate in this breathtaking cinematic homage for The New York Times.

There was a wonderful sense in his writing of a fresh world opening, to which we were all attending… He has created out of his own upbringing a universe.

Complement with Heaney’s beautiful reading of “Death of a Naturalist,” then revisit this cinematic homage to H.G. Wells.