Seamus Heaney

In recent years Seamus Heaney has earned the reputation of being the most important Irish poet since Yeats. In this book, originally published in 1982, Blake Morrison identifies the central characteristics of his achievement, uncovering the sources of Heaneys poems, placing his work within both Irish and Anglo-American traditions and explaining his poetrys complex relation to the political troubles in Northern Ireland. A lively, personal and carefully researched account by a writer who is himself a poet and critic, this book forcefully challenges some of the myths surrounding Heaneys work and places it in proper perspective.