The letters provide us with an intimate, multi-layered understanding of this extraordinarypoet's life and mind.
Seamus Heaney Book order
Seamus Heaney was an Irish poet celebrated for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth. His poetry frequently exalts everyday miracles and brings the living past vibrantly to life. Through his writing, he explored the complexities of human experience and the profound connection to the land. Heaney's distinctive voice offers readers a rich engagement with language and the enduring resonance of memory.







- 2023
- 2022
This is the first ever collected volume of Seamus Heaney's translations from languages including Old and Middle Irish and English, Medieval Italian, Classical Greek and Latin and Modern Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian, German and Greek
- 2018
The Cure at Troy
- 88 pages
- 4 hours of reading
A version of Sophocles' Philoctetes that 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' invincible bow, and turn back to seek his help.
- 2018
100 Poems
- 184 pages
- 7 hours of reading
Seamus Heaney had the idea to form a personal selection of poems from across the entire arc of his writing life, small yet comprehensive enough to serve as an introduction for all comers. But now, finally, the project has been returned to, resulting in an intimate gathering of poems chosen and introduced by the Heaney family.
- 2017
Aeneid Book VI
- 64 pages
- 3 hours of reading
In a momentous publication, Seamus Heaney's translation of Book VI of the Aeneid, Virgil's epic poem composed sometime between 29 and 19 BC, follows the hero, Aeneas, on his descent into the underworld.
- 2016
Aeneid
- 64 pages
- 3 hours of reading
In a momentous publication, Seamus Heaney's translation of Book VI of the Aeneid, Virgil's epic poem composed sometime between 29 and 19 BC, follows the hero, Aeneas, on his descent into the underworld. In Stepping Stones, 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.' In this new 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'.
- 2016
William Wordsworth : Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney
- 160 pages
- 6 hours of reading
In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature.
- 2014
New Selected Poems 1988-2013
- 240 pages
- 9 hours of reading
New Selected Poems 1988-2013 offers the poems that Heaney himself selected from his collections Seeing Things, The Spirit Level, Beowulf, Electric Light, District and Circle and Human Chain.
- 2013
Seamus Heaney Box Set
- 960 pages
- 34 hours of reading
The book includes stories like "Death of a Naturalist," "Door into the Dark," "Wintering Out," "North," "Field Work," "Station Island," "The Haw Lantern," "Seeing Things," "The Spirit Level," "Electric Light," "District and Circle," "Human Chain," and "Beowulf."
- 2012
Human Chain
- 96 pages
- 4 hours of reading
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 in the Aeneid 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 pietas for the dead - friends, neighbours and family - which is yet wholly and movingly vernacular. Human Chain is Seamus Heaney's twelfth collection of poems.

