Reviews provided by Syndetics

Kirkus Book Review

Field Work is Seamus Heaney's fifth book of poems, and his first to be published in this country. His strong and beautiful verse already has a following on American campuses, and this fine new book will undoubtedly extend the range of his influence. His Ireland is an ""island. . . full of comfortless voices""; he lived in Belfast for many years, as the elegies for the war dead (""Casualty,"" ""A Postcard from North Antrim,"" etc.) and other troubled poems attest. ""Ugolino,"" the translation of a passage from The Divine Comedy, also concerns war and vengeance, and injustice: ""For the sins/ of Ugolino, who betrayed your forts,/ Should never have been visited on his sons."" The delicate ""Elegy"" is a memory of Robert Lowell's last days. But Heaney's Ireland is also quotidian: ""She came every morning to draw water/ Like an old bat staggering up the field:/ The pump's whooping cough, the bucket's clatter/ And slow diminuendo as it filled,/ Announced her."" Ten ""Glanmore Sonnets,"" which occupy a central place in the book, commemorate an easing in the poet's life, a time when ""Vowels ploughed into other: opened ground""; and this is the ""field work"" of the title poem as well. Looking at an ugly badger, Heaney asks: ""How perilous is it to choose/ not to love the life we're shown?"" Waist-deep in language, he does. A fine introduction to a staunch, resonant spirit. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Seamus Heaney was born in Mossbawn, Ireland on April 13, 1939. He received a degree in English from Queen's College in Belfast in 1961. After earning his teacher's certificate in English from St. Joseph's College in Belfast the following year, he took a position at the school as an English teacher. During his time as a teacher at St. Joseph's, he wrote and published work in the university magazine under the pen name Incertus.

In 1966, he became an English literature lecturer at Queen's College in Belfast. His first volume of poems, Death of a Naturalist, went on to receive the E.C. Gregory Award, the Cholmondeley Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.

After the death of his parents, Heaney published the poetry volumes The Haw Lantern, which includes a sonnet sequence memorializing his mother, and Seeing Things, a collection containing numerous poems for his father. His other works included Field Work, Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996, and Human Chain.

Heaney was a professor at Harvard from 1981 to 1997 and its Poet in Residence from 1988 to 2006. From 1989 to 1994 he was also the Professor of Poetry at Oxford and in 1996 was made a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres. Other awards that he received include the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (1968), the E. M. Forster Award (1975), the PEN Translation Prize (1985), the Golden Wreath of Poetry (2001), T. S. Eliot Prize (2006) and two Whitbread Prizes (1996 and 1999). In 2012, he was awarded the Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry. His literary papers are held by the National Library of Ireland.

He died following a short illness on August 30, 2013 at the age of 74. Heaney's last words were in a text to his wife Marie, "Noli timere", which means "Do not be afraid."

(Bowker Author Biography)