Faber to Publish New Seamus Heaney Collection in Late 2014
A new companion volume to Seamus Heaney's New and Selected Poems 1966-1987 is set to be published by Faber & Faber later this year. The posthumous collection, which Heaney was working on up until his death, begins with 1991's Seeing Things and continues to Human Chain (2010). More from The Guardian:
A poem written for his granddaughter and never published before in the UK will form part of a new collection of selected poems by the late Seamus Heaney, spanning 25 years and "complet[ing] the arc of a remarkable career", his publisher announced on Thursday.
Heaney had discussed "the prospect of a companion volume" to his New Selected Poems 1966–1987 with Faber shortly before his death last August, said the publisher. The collection, he hoped, would be "aimed at presenting the second half of his career, 'from Seeing Things onwards', as he foresaw it," according to Faber. Heaney, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1995, died before he was able to complete the book, but he left behind selections for the edition, which Faber has followed.
The new selection starts with 1991's Seeing Things, and encompasses poems from his Whitbread award-winning The Spirit Level (1996) and Beowulf (1999), as well as his collections Electric Light (2001), District and Circle (2006) and Human Chain (2010).
The last poem will be Heaney's final work, In Time, which was published in the New Yorker last year but has never been published in the UK. Written for his granddaughter, Síofra, it sees Heaney write of how "your bare foot on the floor / Keeps me in step", and of how, "Listening to Bach / I saw you years from now / (More years than I'll be allowed) / Your toddler wobbles gone, / A sure and grown woman." [...]
Continue reading at The Guardian.