The Poems of Seamus Heaney review collected works reveal his colossal achievement

"Baudelaire introduced ordinary objects into poetry likening the sky to a pan lid and by doing so revolutionised poetic language. Likewise, Seamus Heaney introduced Northern Irish vernacular into the English lyric, peppering his lines with words like glarry, the Ulster word for muddy; kesh, from Irish ceis, a wickerwork causeway; and dailigone, daylight gone or dusk, from Ulster-Scots. It is this that gives his writing a mulchy richness and cultural resonance that remain unique in contemporary poetry."

"It's especially rich as digging for Heaney is also a metaphor for writing, while the archaeological metaphor resonates with the darkly symbolic bog poems. Bringing all Heaney's poems together in one volume, this collection lets us see for the first time all the archaeological layers that make up his oeuvre, from the talismanic Death of a Naturalist (1966) to the visionary long poem Station Island (1984),"

"The book also makes available at last Heaney's prose poems, Stations (1975), released in a small press edition by Ulsterman Publications, which Heaney effectively kept under wraps as he felt the publication of Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns a work of complete authority had stolen his thunder in this form. The editors have taken the admirable decision to leave the published volumes intact, so that their careful ordering, something Heaney learned from Yeats, remains in place."

Baudelaire introduced ordinary objects into poetry, likening the sky to a pan lid and revolutionising poetic language. Seamus Heaney incorporated Northern Irish vernacular into the English lyric, using words such as glarry, kesh and dailigone to lend mulchy richness and cultural resonance. Heaney reworks Baudelaire's The Digging Skeleton in North (1975), where skeletons dig the earth like navvies, making digging a metaphor for writing. The archaeological metaphor connects with darkly symbolic bog poems and underpins recurring themes throughout his oeuvre. Collected volumes trace layers from Death of a Naturalist through Station Island, The Haw Lantern and The Human Chain, revealing shifts from talismanic, visionary, to intimate modes. Chanson d'Aventure records an ambulance journey after a stroke with striking clinical lines.

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