Combined with his family's farming heritage, this makes him particularly concerned with two major social and political issues. The first is rootedness to the soil and peasant heritage, and the value of that, especially for the poet, in an increasingly urbanized world.More importantly, he is concerned with the conflicts between Protestant and Catholic in Ireland, and while dismayed about the oppression of and discrimination against Roman Catholics, at the same time deplores violence of all types. Many of his writings search the history of Ireland for the root causes of violence. Thus, yes, social awareness is an important concern in Heaney's poems. Sources: