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"Seamus Heaney was the leading Irish poet of the second half of the twentieth century, and, after W. B. Yeats, arguably the most significant poet in the history of Irish literature. When he died in 2013 the public reaction in Ireland was extraordinary, and the outpouring of feeling decisively demonstrated that he occupied an exceptional place in national life. The words of his last message to his wife, 'Noli timere', 'Don't be afraid', appeared over and over again on social media, while key phrases from favourite poems became and have remained canonical. In this short book, conceived for the Writers on Writers series, historian Roy Foster offers an extended and largley chronological reflecti...
A formal analysis A Singing Contest comprises close readings of Seamus Heaney's poetry. Tyler argues that in an era of fractured poetry and politics, Seamus Heaney stands out: his impulse is towards unity and regeneration. Her book considers the interplay between different kinds of literary tradition and community in his poetry. For Heaney, poetry represents a structure allowing imaginative mediation of conflicts that appear irreconcilable in the social, political and historical realms. By detailed structural analysis of diction, meter, imagery and generic form, Tyler illustrates how Heaney's poems create concords from discords, unities from fracture. From the preface by Rosanna Warren: A Si...
In North Seamus Heaney found a myth which allowed him to articulate a vision of Ireland - its people, history and landscape. Here the Irish experience is refracted through images drawn from different parts of the Northern European experience, and the idea of the north allows the poet to contemplate the violence on his home ground in relation to memories of the Scandinavian and English invasions which have marked Irish history so indelibly.
Widely regarded as the finest poet of his generation, Seamus Heaney is the subject of numerous critical studies; but no book-length portrait has appeared until now. Through his own lively and eloquent reminiscences, Stepping Stones retraces the poet's steps from his early works, through to his receipt of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature and his post-Nobel life. It is supplemented with a large number of photographs, many from the Heaney family album and published here for the first time. In response to firm but subtle questioning from Dennis O'Driscoll, Seamus Heaney sheds a personal light on his work (poems, essays, translations, plays) and on the artistic and ethical challenges he faced, providing an original, diverting and absorbing store of reflections, opinions and recollections.
Seamus Heaney's new collection elicits continuities and solidarities, between husband and wife, child and parent, then and now, inside an intently remembered present - the stepping stones of the day, the weight and heft of what is passed from hand to hand, lifted and lowered. Human Chain also broaches larger questions of transmission, as lifelines to the inherited past. There are newly minted versions of anonymous early Irish lyrics, poems which stand at the crossroads of oral and written, and other 'hermit songs' which weigh equally in their balance the craft of scribe and the poet's early calling as scholar. A remarkable sequence entitled 'Route 110' plots the descent into the underworld i...
At the centre of this collection, which includes groups of elegies and love poems, there is a short sonnet sequence which concentrates themes apparent elsewhere in the book: the individual's responsibility for his own choices, the artist's commitment to his vocation, the vulnerability of all in the face of circumstance and death.'Throughout the volume Heaney's outstanding gifts, his eye, his ear, his understanding of the poetic language are on display - this is a book we cannot do without.' Martin Dodsworth, Guardian
Originally published in 1969, Seamus Heaney's Door into the Dark continues a furrow so startlingly opened in his first collection, Death of a Naturalist (1966). With the sensuosness and physicality of language that would become the hallmark of his early writing, these poems graphically depict the author's rural upbringing, from the local forge to the banks of Lough Neagh, concluding in the preserving waters of the bogland and a look ahead to his next book, Wintering Out (1972).
An up-to-date overview of Heaney's career thus far, with detailed readings of all his major publications.
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In 2013, Seamus Heaney met with Faber poetry editor Matthew Hollis in Dublin. He said that one project he would very much like to complete would be to prepare a personal selection from across the entire arc of his poetry, small yet comprehensive enough to serve as an introduction for all comers. He never managed to make the selection in his lifetime, and after his passing, the project was initially set aside. But now, at last, it has been returned to once more, and the result is an intimate gathering of poems chosen and introduced by the Heaney family. Coinciding with the opening by the National Library of Ireland of a permanent exhibition dedicated to the life and work of Seamus Heaney, this is a singular, accessible selection for new and younger readers that has the opportunity to reach far and wide, now and ahead.