Hot Off The Press: The Poems Of Seamus Heaney

Catherine Heaney celebrates her father’s breathtaking work in this new landmark volume …

“October 9 sees the publication of The Poems of Seamus Heaney, a landmark volume of my father’s poetry that has been years in the making. It draws together all twelve of his poetry collections, along with all the other poems he published in journals, newspapers and pamphlets over the course of his writing life. It’s an astonishing achievement on the part of the volume’s three editors, and a moment of enormous pride for our family, but of poignancy too.

I remember times over the years when Dad would take delivery of a box from Faber containing a new book, opening that first copy, scanning for any printing errors that might have crept in (happily, almost never), but also taking delight in the physical object itself. This was inevitably followed by a heady few weeks of travel, readings, launch parties and increasing demands for interviews and all the media trappings that accompany any publication. As gruelling as it could be, especially as the years went on, I think he actually enjoyed a lot of it: sharing the new work with his readers, who would patiently queue up afterwards to get the book signed (he later joked that unsigned copies were rarer and more valuable). And for us, his family, it was a chance to see and hear him perform the work that he quietly got on with in the midst of an astonishingly busy life of teaching, travel and engagements. How he managed to find that time, I still can’t comprehend – yet here it is, a trove of hundreds of poems, the culmination of a life’s work, presented as never before with explanatory notes and insights – and I hope he would feel proud of it.

Of course it’s bittersweet to enter into the whole giddy hoopla of the launch without Dad himself at the centre it – to hold this beautiful book knowing it won’t be inscribed, as he always did for my brothers and me as soon as a new volume landed. But it’s also a moment to celebrate a breathtaking body of work with his loyal readers, fellow poets and friends; and, hopefully, for a new generation to read and reinterpret for themselves, and carry into the future.”