Spirit Level: Poems

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) was born on a farm in County Derry, Northern Ireland, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. His debut collection, Death of a Naturalist (Faber and Faber, 1966), was followed by Field Work (Faber and Faber, 1979) and Station Island (Faber and Faber, 1984). His translation of Beowulf (Faber and Faber, 1999) won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. He taught at Harvard University and served as Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1989 to 1994.