New and Selected Poems (24 page)
This volume contains a selection of work from each of Seamus Heaney’s published books of poetry up to and including the Whitbread prize- winning collection,
The Haw Lantern
(1987).
‘His is “close-up” poetry — close up to thought, to the world, to the emotions. Few writers at work today, in verse or fiction, can give the sense of rich, fecund,
lived
life that Heaney does.’ John Banville
‘More than any other poet since Wordsworth he can make us understand that the outside world is not outside, but what we are made of.’ John Carey
‘Heaney’s voice, by turns mythological and journalistic, rural and sophisticated, reminiscent and impatient, stern and yielding, curt and expansive, is one of a suppleness almost equal to consciousness itself.’ Helen Vendler
Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland.
Death of a Naturalist
, his first collection, appeared in 1966, and since then he has published poetry, criticism and translations which have established him as one of the leading poets of his generation. He has twice won the Whitbread Book of the Year, for
The Spirit Level
(1996) and
Beowulf
(1999). In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
District and Circle
, his eleventh collection of poems, was published in 2006 and was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize.
poetry
DEATH OF A NATURALIST
DOOR INTO THE DARK
WINTERING OUT
NORTH
FIELD WORK
STATION ISLAND
SWEENEY ASTRAY
SWEENEY’S FLIGHT
(with photographs by Rachel Giese)
THE HAW LANTERN
SEEING THINGS
LAMENTS BY JAN KOCHANOWSKI
(translated with Stanislaw Baráncazk)
OPENED GROUND: POEMS
1966–1996
THE SPIRIT LEVEL
BEOWULF
ELECTRIC LIGHT
DISTRICT AND CIRCLE
THE RATTLE BAG
(edited with Ted Hughes)
THE SCHOOL BAG
(edited with Ted Hughes)
prose
PREOCCUPATIONS: SELECTED PROSE
1968–1978
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE TONGUE
THE REDRESS OF POETRY: OXFORD LECTURES
FINDERS KEEPERS: SELECTED PROSE
1971–2001
play
THE CURE AT TROY
THE BURIAL AT THEBES
CopyrightFirst published in 1990
by Faber and Faber Limited
Bloomsbury House
74-77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2009All rights reserved
© Seamus Heaney, 1966, 1969, 1972, 1975, 1979, 1983, 1984, 1987The right of Seamus Heaney to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
ISBN 978—0—571—25077—6
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