Diasporic situation can happen under such circumstances as colonization, civil war, misrule, great natural disasters and globalization etc. According to Agnew, diasporic members frequently feel a sense of alienation in the host country. To resist assimilation into the host country, and to avoid social amnesia about their collective histories, diasporic people attempt to recreate their artistic, cultural, and political practices and productions.
In the sense above, Yeats and Heaney's poetry fall under diasporic literature. They describe some alienation, dispersion and the mental wound caused by the Great Famine as well as by inter-ethnic/religious conflicts as one result of colonization. The diasporic element of Yeats's poems is characterized by the extreme sense of alienation through his search for the faery land and the holy artistic city. Heaney also chose to be an inner émigré as a way of survival during Ulster Troubles.
Moreover, the two poets' works share diasporic characteristics, especially in the respect that they deal with the traces of the Great Famine leading to dispersion.
However, instead of assimilating into amnesia of the collective wound or into the host country, they both reveal their desire to cross over their local boundary, seemingly expanding into transnationalism.

• Hong,Sung Sook(Cheongju University)