{"title":"Books by Seamus Heaney","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780571203765","title":"Beowulf","description":"\u003cp\u003eComposed towards the end of the first millennium, the Anglo-Saxon poem \u003cb\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/b\u003e is one of the great Northern epics and a classic of European literature. In his new translation, Seamus Heaney has produced a work which is both true, line by line, to the original poem, and an expression, in its language and music, of something fundamental to his own creative gift.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on, physically and psychically exposed, in that exhausted aftermath. It is not hard to draw parallels between this story and the history of the twentieth century, nor can Heaney's \u003cb\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/b\u003e fail to be read partly in the light of his Northern Irish upbringing. But it also transcends such considerations, telling us psychological and spiritual truths that are permanent and liberating.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201728970930,"sku":"9780571203765","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571203765.jpg?v=1786013504"},{"product_id":"9780571101580","title":"Wintering Out","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Seamus Heaney has gone beyond the themes of his earlier poetry and has made the giant step towards the most ambitious, most intractable themes of maturity.  The power of this book comes from a sense that he is reaching out towards a type of desolation and of isolation without which no imagination can be seen to have grown up.'  Eavan Boland, \u003ci\u003eIrish Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Keyed and pitched unlike any other significant poet at work in the language anywhere.'  Harold Bloom, \u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201746075826,"sku":"9780571101580","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571101580_a3fe721e-e735-45bd-b52c-7387dfa36c70.jpg?v=1786014204"},{"product_id":"9780571223626","title":"The Burial at Thebes","description":"\u003cp\u003eCommissioned to mark the centenary of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 2004, \u003ci\u003eThe Burial at Thebes\u003c\/i\u003e is Seamus Heaney's new verse translation of Sophocles' great tragedy, \u003ci\u003eAntigone\u003c\/i\u003e - whose eponymous heroine is one of the most sharply individualized and compelling figures in Western drama. Faithful to the play's time and place, \u003ci\u003eThe Burial at Thebes\u003c\/i\u003e represents opposing voices as they enact the ancient conflict between family and state in a time of crisis, pitching the morality of private allegiance against that of public service.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAbove all, \u003ci\u003eThe Burial at Thebes\u003c\/i\u003e honours the sovereign urgency and grandeur of the Antigone, in which language speaks truth to power, then and now.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201790705842,"sku":"9780571223626","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571223626_eb71c816-9b13-49b5-9984-b5e24ce2fb4e.jpg?v=1786013657"},{"product_id":"9780571108138","title":"North","description":"In \u003cb\u003eNorth\u003c\/b\u003e 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.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43201796735154,"sku":"9780571108138","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":57685676196213,"sku":"9780571377794","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571108138_5a872252-a49f-4f83-a7cc-29908df3f0a1.jpg?v=1792598819"},{"product_id":"9780571114337","title":"Field Work","description":"\u003cp\u003eAt 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'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, \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201796800690,"sku":"9780571114337","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571114337.jpg?v=1786014212"},{"product_id":"9780571347155","title":"100 Poems","description":"Seamus Heaney had the idea to form 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 do this in his lifetime, and no edition exists which has such a broad range, drawing from first collection to last. But now, at last, the project has been returned to, resulting in an intimate gathering of poems chosen and introduced by the Heaney family. Coinciding with the National Library of Ireland launching a major exhibition dedicated to the life and work of Seamus Heaney, \u003ci\u003e100 Poems\u003c\/i\u003e is a singular, accessible collection for new and younger readers that has the opportunity to reach far and wide, now and for years to come.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57688177475957,"sku":"9780571347162","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":43201803845810,"sku":"9780571347155","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571347162_739c1b45-c986-4964-8586-f55bdffec56e.jpg?v=1792686083"},{"product_id":"9780571279418","title":"District and Circle","description":"\u003cp\u003eSeamus Heaney's new collection starts 'in an age of bare hands and  cast iron' and ends 'as the automatic lock \/ clunks shut' in the eerie  new conditions of a menaced twenty-first century. In their haunted,  almost visionary clarity, the poems assay the weight and worth of what  has been held in the hand and in the memory. Images out of a childhood  spent safe from the horrors of World War II - railway sleepers, a  sledgehammer, the 'heavyweight silence' of cattle out in rain - are  coloured by a strongly contemporary sense that 'anything can happen',  and other images from the dangerous present - a journey on the  underground, a melting glacier - are fraught with this same anxiety.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut District and Circle, which includes a number of  prose poems and translations, offers resistance as the poet gathers his  staying powers and stands his ground in the hiding places of love and  excited language. In a sequence like 'The Tollund Man in Springtime' and  in several poems which 'do the rounds of the district' - its known  roads and rivers and trees, its familiar and unfamiliar ghosts - the  gravity of memorial is transformed into the grace of recollection. With  more relish and conviction than ever, Seamus Heaney maintains his trust  in the obduracy of workaday realities and the mystery of everyday  renewals:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAgain the growl \/ \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eOf shutting doors, the jolt and one-off treble \/ \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eOf  iron on iron, then a long centrifugal \/ \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eHaulage of speed through  every dragging socket.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e(from 'District and Circle')\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43206061981874,"sku":"9780571279418","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571279418_ff1b041f-c197-43bd-9b40-663541a31ffe.jpg?v=1786014194"},{"product_id":"9780571101269","title":"Door into the Dark","description":"Originally published in 1969, Seamus Heaney's \u003cb\u003eDoor into the Dark\u003c\/b\u003e continues a furrow so startlingly opened in his first collection, \u003cb\u003eDeath of a Naturalist\u003c\/b\u003e (1966).  With the sensuousness 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, \u003cb\u003eWintering Out\u003c\/b\u003e (1972).","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43399337115826,"sku":"9780571101269","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571101269_96814d03-40d3-4939-83a2-f503ee9ef576.jpg?v=1786014203"},{"product_id":"9780571327331","title":"Aeneid Book VI","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn a momentous publication, Seamus Heaney's translation of Book VI of the \u003ci\u003eAeneid\u003c\/i\u003e, Virgil's epic poem composed sometime between 29 and 19 BC, follows the hero, Aeneas, on his descent into the underworld. In \u003ci\u003eStepping Stones\u003c\/i\u003e,  a book of interviews conducted by Dennis O'Driscoll, Heaney  acknowledged the importance of the poem to his writing, noting that  'there's one Virgilian journey that has indeed been a constant presence,  and that is Aeneas's venture into the underworld. The motifs in Book VI  have been in my head for years - the golden bough, Charon's barge, the  quest to meet the shade of the father.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this translation,  Heaney employs the same deft handling of the original combined with the  immediacy of language and flawless poetic voice as was on show in his  translation of Beowulf, a reimagining which, in the words of Bernard  O'Donoghue, brought the ancient poem back to life in 'a miraculous mix  of the poem's original spirit and Heaney's voice'.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43406039941298,"sku":"9780571327331","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571327331_0d07a64a-45ad-46ee-b0a9-e36727090f23.jpg?v=1786014926"},{"product_id":"9780571342532","title":"The Translations of Seamus Heaney","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘A huge book, an immense book. Such adventure and variety, such industry, such subjugation of self.’ Michael Hofmann, \u003ci\u003eTLS\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHeaney not only translated classic works of Latin and Old English but also poems from a great number of ancient and modern European languages, not least translations from the Old, Middle and Modern Irish of his homeland. The breadth and depth in evidence here is extraordinary — from monastic hymns and prayers, to the civic and familial tragedies of Sophocles and Kochanowski; from Virgil and Dante’s living underworld to the stark landscapes of Sweeney’s Ireland.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs editor, Marco Songzogni frames the translations with the poet’s own writings on his works. Collectively these bring us closer to an understanding of the genius for interpretation and transformation that distinguished Heaney as one of the great poet-translators of all time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘The Translations . . . is a landmark volume, a striking testament to the particular and generous genius of Seamus Heaney. . . The crucial part played by translation in the formation and development of his extraordinary talent is under the spotlight as readers are further gifted with Marco Sonzogni’s meticulously detailed notes. . ..’ Martina Evans, \u003ci\u003eIrish Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘…this volume is handsome testimony to Heaney’s lifelong service to a noble art.’ David Wheatley, \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘This magnificent book. . . is without a doubt a compendium to be cherished, and to be celebrated.’ Paul  Perry, \u003ci\u003eSunday Independent\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43409213227186,"sku":"9780571342532","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571342532.jpg?v=1786015325"},{"product_id":"9780571340385","title":"The Poems of Seamus Heaney","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e , \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTelegraph\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003eand \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003eBest Book of 2025\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'The glorious gathering-in of his achievement that is \u003ci\u003eThe Poems of Seamus Heaney,\u003c\/i\u003e edited with meticulous care and luminous clarity. . . allows us for the first time to see his dozen formal collections as only the most visible peaks in a constantly rolling range of creativity.' Fintan O'Toole, \u003ci\u003eObserver\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘This book is a landmark… [and] lets us see Heaney’s work, whose ripples we are still learning to navigate, for the colossal achievement it is, and it reminds us that Heaney is not only a keeper but an enricher of the word-hoard.’ Philip Terry, \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is the long-awaited, definitive edition of Seamus Heaney’s poetry. It encompasses all the poems Heaney published in his lifetime as well as the small number that appeared after his death: twelve single volumes, from \u003ci\u003eDeath of a Naturalist \u003c\/i\u003e(1966) to \u003ci\u003eHuman Chain\u003c\/i\u003e (2010), and those poems published in pamphlets, journals and magazines or with limited circulation. In addition, the book includes a selection of unpublished material chosen by the poet's family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is a body of work that, in its entirety, resounds with the ‘lyrical beauty and ethical depth’ cited by the Nobel committee: poems ‘which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCritical introductions to each collection and notes that illuminate the history and development of the poems make this the essential volume for admirers of Heaney's work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e‘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\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e‘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\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘His is “closeup” 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\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘These poems find – in the dowser’s gift and the child’s perception of the world – images of the marvellous that are also wonderfully grounded. . . Heaney is a poet who deserves to be read in entirety.’ Jamie McKendrick\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘For Heaney, there were marvels enough in this world, and never mind the next. Ordinary objects and places – a sofa, a wireless, a satchel, a gust of wind, the sound of rain – were sanctified.’ Blake Morrison\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55896344625525,"sku":"9780571340385","price":45.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571340385_85d978e1-9cbb-4638-bf42-60cecd0f78be.jpg?v=1786015269"},{"product_id":"9780571144693","title":"Seeing Things","description":"This collection of Seamus Heaney's work, especially in the vivid and surprising twelve-line poems entitled \"Squarings\", shows he is ready to re-imagine experience and \"to credit marvels\". The title poem, \"Seeing Things\", is typical of the whole book. It begins with memories of an actual event, then moves towards the visionary while never relinquishing its feel for the textures and sensations of the world. Translations of Virgil and Homer provide a prelude and a coda where motifs implicit in the earlier lyrics are given direct expression in extended narratives. Journeys to underworlds and otherworlds correspond to the journeys made by poetic language itself. From the author of \"The Haw Lantern\", \"Wintering Out\", \"Station Island\" and \"North\".","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56291249291637,"sku":"9780571144693","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571144693_3c186f5e-9d7a-4257-af47-5819a10a4629.jpg?v=1786013368"},{"product_id":"9780571232871","title":"The Haw Lantern","description":"Widely praised on its first publication in 1978, The Haw Lantern ventured into new imaginative territory with poems exploring the theme of loss - including a celebrated sonnet sequence concerning the death of the poet's mother - joined by meditations on the conscience of the writer and exercises in an allegorical vein.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":56291292348789,"sku":"9780571232871","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":57688192549237,"sku":"9780571352326","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571232871.jpg?v=1792686109"},{"product_id":"9780571133024","title":"Station Island","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe title poem from this collection is set on an island that has been a site of pilgrimage in Ireland for over a thousand years.  A narrative sequence, it is an autobiographical quest concerned with 'the growth of a poet's mind'.  The long poem is preceded by a section of shorter lyrics and leads into a third group of poems in which the poet's voice is at one with the voice of the legendary mad King Sweeney.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Surpasses even what one might reasonably expect from this magnificently gifted poet.'  John Carey, \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56291457368437,"sku":"9780571133024","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571133024_3f483a6f-e591-4148-8c5d-91dd6728d876.jpg?v=1786014219"},{"product_id":"9780571341085","title":"The Letters of Seamus Heaney","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA marvellous book, lovingly edited, beautifully produced. . . and brimming with literary insights, much laughter, a sprinkle of gossip and the poet’s insuppressible joie de vivre, even in adversity. Buy it, read it, and keep it to hand on to your children.’ John Banville, \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eEvery now and again I need to get down here, to get into the Diogenes tub, as it were, or the Colmcille beehive hut, or the Mossbawn scullery. At any rate, a hedge surrounds me, the blackbird calls, the soul settles for an hour or two . . .\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this wonderful selection, spanning fifty years of Seamus Heaney’s correspondence, we are given access as never before to the life and poetic development of a literary titan – from his early days in Belfast, through his controversial decision to settle in the Republic, to the gradual broadening of horizons that culminated in the award of a Nobel Prize and the years of international acclaim that kept him heroically busy until his death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEditor Christopher Reid draws from both public and private archives to reveal this story in the poet’s own words. Listening to his voice, we find ourselves in the same room as a man whose presence enriched the world immeasurably, and whose legacy continues to deepen our sense of what truly matters.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘An epistolary cornucopia. . . contains an abundance of insight and illumination, literary gossip and appraisal, playfulness and cogency, all bound up with a steadfast attention to the feelings and expectations of each correspondent.’ Patricia Craig, \u003ci\u003eTImes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e, Books of the Year\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘. . . communicates marvellously the encompassing personality and intelligence of this fine poet.’ Seamus Perry, \u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e, Books of the Year\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘. . . a comprehensive collection of letters which reveal a great poet at work, but also charts in engrossing detail the times he lived in.’ Paul Perry, \u003ci\u003eIrish Independent\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57685766635893,"sku":"9780571341092","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":56291461824885,"sku":"9780571341085","price":40.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571341092.jpg?v=1792598946"},{"product_id":"9780571141517","title":"Government of the Tongue","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe title, \u003cb\u003eThe Government of the Tongue\u003c\/b\u003e, carries suggestions of both monastic discipline and untrammelled romanticism, and is meant to raise an old question about the rights and status of poetic utterance itself.  Should it be governed?  Should it be the governor?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSeamus Heaney here scrutinizes the work of several poets, British and Irish, American and European, whose work is responsive to such strains and tensions.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56291572121973,"sku":"9780571141517","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571141517_38609471-7d8b-4a61-95d8-e97c2a532925.jpg?v=1786013357"},{"product_id":"9780571269242","title":"Human Chain","description":"\u003cp\u003eSeamus 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. \u003ci\u003eHuman Chain\u003c\/i\u003e 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 in the \u003ci\u003eAeneid\u003c\/i\u003e against single moments in the arc of a life, from a 1950s adolescence to the birth of the poet's first grandchild. Other poems display a Virgilian \u003ci\u003epietas\u003c\/i\u003e for the dead - friends, neighbours and family - which is yet wholly and movingly vernacular. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHuman Chain\u003c\/i\u003e is Seamus Heaney's twelfth collection of poems.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56291575693685,"sku":"9780571269242","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571269242_28d59600-ffe1-463d-a79e-72e87284c207.jpg?v=1786014071"},{"product_id":"9780571327652","title":"The Cure at Troy","description":"\u003cp\u003eSeamus Heaney's version of Sophocles's \u003ci\u003ePhiloctetes\u003c\/i\u003e tells of the wounded hero marooned upon an island by the Greeks during the Siege of Troy. As the conflict comes to a climax, the Greeks begin to realise they cannot win the Trojan war without Philoctetes's invincible bow, and turn back to seek his help.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Cure at Troy\u003c\/i\u003e dramatises the conflict between personal integrity and political expediency, and explores ways in which the victims of injustice can become as devoted to the contemplation of their wounds as the perpetrators are to the justification of their system. Responsive to the Greek playwright's understanding of the relations between public and private morality, \u003ci\u003eThe Cure at Troy\u003c\/i\u003e is a sharp, fast-paced retelling of the Greek original, shot through with Heaney's own Irish speech and context.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHistory says, \u003c\/i\u003eDon't hope\u003cbr\u003eOn this side of the grave.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBut then, once in a lifetime\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe longed-for tidal wave\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eOf justice can rise up,\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAnd hope and history rhyme.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56291716825461,"sku":"9780571327652","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571327652_03934efe-e740-415c-b442-bbdddd3c9c43.jpg?v=1786014935"},{"product_id":"9780571143726","title":"New Selected Poems 1966-1987","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis 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, \u003cb\u003eThe Haw Lantern\u003c\/b\u003e (1987).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'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, \u003ci\u003elived\u003c\/i\u003e life that Heaney does.' John Banville\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'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\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56292011114869,"sku":"9780571143726","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571143726_76190b74-9c0f-45ef-84b6-cf4ea1b9946d.jpg?v=1786013363"},{"product_id":"9780571194933","title":"Opened Ground","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis volume is a much-needed new selection of Seamus Heaney's work, taking account of recent volumes and of the author's work as a translator, and offering a more generous choice from previous volumes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eOpened Ground: Poems 1966-1996\u003c\/b\u003e comes as close to being a 'Collected Poems' as its author cares to make it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt replaces his \u003cb\u003eNew Selected Poems 1966-1987\u003c\/b\u003e, giving a fuller selection from each of the volumes represented there and adding large parts of those that have appeared since, together with examples of his work as a translator from the Greek, Latin, Italian and other languages.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe book concludes with 'Crediting Poetry', the speech with which Seamus Heaney accepted the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded to him, in the words of the Swedish Academy of Letters, for his 'works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth'.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56292012720501,"sku":"9780571194933","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571194933_46e891c7-d229-4d63-afb6-d842a1a5e50e.jpg?v=1786013462"},{"product_id":"9780571321728","title":"New Selected Poems 1988-2013","description":"\u003cp\u003eNew Selected Poems 1988-2013 provides an unrivalled account of a period  of work that was crowned by the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.  Together with its earlier, sibling volume, it completes the arc of a  remarkable career.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShortly before his death in 2013, Seamus Heaney discussed with his publisher the prospect of a companion volume to his landmark New Selected Poems 1966-1987 aimed at presenting the second half of his career, 'from Seeing Things onwards', as he foresaw it. Although he was unable to complete a edition\/selection, he left behind selections that have been followed here. New Selected Poems 1988-2013 reprints the author's chosen poems from his later years, beginning with his ground-breaking volume Seeing Things (1991), his two Whitbread Books of the Year, The Spirit Level (1996) and Beowulf (1999), and his multi-nominated, prize-winning volumes, Electric Light (2001), District and Circle (2006) and Human Chain (2010). The edition concludes with two posthumously published works.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56292214342005,"sku":"9780571321728","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571321728_6351be1c-3529-4afe-8398-37a50cd102a4.jpg?v=1786014841"},{"product_id":"9780571178223","title":"The Spirit Level","description":"The poems in Seamus Heaney's collection \u003cb\u003eThe Spirit Level\u003c\/b\u003e keep discovering the possibilities of 'a new beginning' in all kinds of subjects and circumstances. What is at stake, in poem after poem, is the chance of buoyancy and balance, physical, spiritual and political. Private memories, classical  scenes, humble domestic objects - a whitewash brush, a sofa, a swing - are endowed with talismanic significance, while friends and relatives are invoked for their promise and steadfastness. Throughout the collection, Heaney addresses his concerns, which inevitably include the political situation in his native Northern Ireland, in a poetry that never ceases to be fluid, alert and completely truthful.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56292363305333,"sku":"9780571178223","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571178223_b429ea00-c3d8-4a3e-ae1b-45d350f879c9.jpg?v=1786013422"},{"product_id":"9780571175376","title":"The Redress of Poetry","description":"These lectures were delivered by Seamus Heaney while he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. In the first of them, Heaney discusses and celebrates poetry's special ability to redress spiritual balance and to function as a counterweight to hostile and oppressive forces in the world. He proceeds to explore how this 'redress' manifests itself in a diverse range of poems and poets, including Christopher Marlowe's 'Hero and Leander', 'The Midnight Court' by the eighteenth-century Irish poet Brian Merriman, John Clare's vernacular writing and Oscar Wilde's 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol'. Several twentieth-century poets are also discussed - W. B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop and others - and the whole book constitutes a vivid proof of the claim that 'poetry is strong enough to help'.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56292373266805,"sku":"9780571175376","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571175376_25bc0e3e-1240-4b60-80ee-caa0dee60541.jpg?v=1786013410"},{"product_id":"9780571230419","title":"Beowulf","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e, composed between the seventh and tenth century, is the elegaic narrative of the adventures of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel, and, later, from Grendel's mother. He returns to his own country and dies in old age in a vivid battle against a dragon. The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and living on in the exhausted aftermath. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHeaney's celebrated translation honours what is remote and intuits what is uncannily familiar, at the end of the twentieth century, in this founding masterpiece of English poetry. Now, for the first time, the Old English text - which survived only in a single scorched manuscript, now held in the British Museum - can be read in conjunction with the translation on facing pages.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56292532486517,"sku":"9780571230419","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571230419_b7435999-28d9-4c7a-8fd9-ca95d33cf2d9.jpg?v=1786013776"},{"product_id":"9780571230839","title":"Death of a Naturalist","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn its original appearance in 1966, \u003ci\u003eDeath of a Naturalist \u003c\/i\u003ewon the Cholmondeley Award, a Gregory Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'His words give us the soil-reek of Ireland, the colourful violence of his childhood on a farm in Derry. The full-blooded energy of these poems makes \u003ci\u003eDeath of a Naturalist\u003c\/i\u003e the best first book of poems I've read for some time.' - C.B. Cox in the \u003ci\u003eSpectator\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'The power and precision of his best poems are a delight, and as a first collection \u003ci\u003eDeath of a Naturalist\u003c\/i\u003e is outstanding [...] His subject is those things which are inherent or inherited. What he praises is to be praised in his own work.' - Christopher Ricks, \u003ci\u003eNew Statesman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e'\u003c\/i\u003e'His childhood landscape has acquired the validity of myth.' Michael Longley, \u003ci\u003eIrish Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow, to pry into roots, to finger slime,\u003cbr\u003eTo stare big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring\u003cbr\u003eIs beneath all adult dignity. 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In its soundings of a wide range of poets - Irish and British, American and East European, predecessors and contemporaries - \u003cb\u003eFinders Keepers\u003c\/b\u003e is, as its title indicates, 'an announcement of both excitement and possession'.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311802593653,"sku":"9780571210916","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571210916_944ed6bb-07f3-4351-918e-fbad7a896397.jpg?v=1786013553"},{"product_id":"electric-light","title":"Electric Light","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eElectric Light\u003c\/b\u003e travels widely in time and space, visiting the sites of the classical world, revisiting the poet's childhood: rural electrification and the light of ancient evenings are reconciled within the orbit of a single lifetime. This is a book about origins (not least the origins of words) and oracles: the places where things start from, the ground of understanding - whether in Arcadia or Anahorish, the sanctuary at Epidaurus or the Bann valley in County Derry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eElectric Light\u003c\/b\u003e ranges from short takes ('glosses') to conversation poems whose cunning passagework gives rein to 'the must and drift of talk'; other poems are arranged in sections, their separate cargoes docked alongside each other to reveal a hidden and curative connection. The presocratic wisdom that everything flows is held in tension with the fixities of remembrance: elegising friends and fellow poets, naming 'the real names' of contemporaries behind the Shakespearean roles they played at school. These gifts of recollection renew the poet's calling to assign to things their proper names. The resulting poems are full of delicately prescriptive tonalities, where Heaney can be heard extending his word-hoard and rollcall in this, his eleventh collection.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57481388392821,"sku":"9780571207985","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571207985.jpg?v=1786089645"},{"product_id":"sweeney-astray","title":"Sweeney Astray","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eSweeney Astray\u003c\/b\u003e is Seamus Heaney's version of the medieval Irish work \u003ci\u003eBuile Suibhne\u003c\/i\u003e - the first complete translation since 1913.  Its hero, Mad Sweeney, undergoes a series of purgatorial adventures after he is cursed by a saint and turned into a bird at the Battle of Moira.  The poetry spoken by the mad king, exiled to the trees and the slopes, is among the richest and most immediately appealing in the whole canon of Gaelic literature.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSweeney Astray\u003c\/b\u003e not only restores to us a work of historical and literary importance but offers the genius of one of our greatest living poets to reinforce its claims on the reader of contemporary literature.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57481390752117,"sku":"9780571210091","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571210091.jpg?v=1786089648"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-seamus-heaney.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}