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