 I had a great sense of release as they were being written, a joy and devil-may-careness, and that convinced me that one could be faithful to the nature of the English language ... and, at the same time, be faithful to one's own non-English origin ..." This quote shows that a sense of "place" was very important to Heaney in the formation of "Wintering Out".As Heaney said, the place name poems were his mode for rooting the collection in Ireland, acknowledging his own origins, even while doing so in the English language.