Book description
This 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.
Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996 comes as close to being a 'Collected
Poems' as its author cares to make it. It replaces his New Selected
Poems 1966-1987, 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. The 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'.
Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. Death of
a Naturalist, his first collection of poems, appeared in 1966 and since
then he has published poetry, criticism and translations - including
Beowulf (1999) - which have established him as one of the leading poets
now at work. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
District and Circle (2006) was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2006.
Stepping Stones, a book of interviews conducted by Dennis O'Driscoll,
appeared in 2008. In 2009 he received the David Cohen Prize for
Literature.
