 Cover of British hardback edition | |
| Author | Seamus Heaney |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Publisher | Faber and Faber, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (US) |
Publication date | 2 September 2010 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 96 |
| ISBN | 0-571-26922-2 (UK hardback) ISBN 0-374-17351-6 (US hardback) |
| OCLC | 624414074 |
| Preceded by | District and Circle |
Human Chain is the twelfth and final poetry collection by Seamus Heaney. It was first published in 2010 by the Faber and Faber. [1]
Colm Tóibín of The Guardian called it Heaney's "best single volume for many years" and "one that contains some of the best poems he has written". He further writes "Heaney allows this struggle between the lacrimae rerum and the consolations of poetry to have a force which is satisfying because its result is so tentative and uncertain. Memory here can be filled with tones of regret and even undertones of anguish, but it also can appear with a sense of hard-won wonder. There is an active urge to capture the living breath of things, but he also allows sorrow into his poems." [2] Kate Kellaway of The Observer wrote "Human Chain is about inheritance – in the fullest sense of the word. If it were a poet such as Philip Larkin writing, human chain would mean "man hands on misery to man". But what makes Seamus Heaney's writing so fortifying is, partly, his temperament: his human chain is tolerant, durable, compassionate and every link is reinforced by literature." [3] Luke Smith of The Oxonian Review wrote, "Heaney is now 71, and Human Chain is his first book since the stroke. It should not surprise us, then, that the poems here concern themselves with mortality, itself so finely expressed in the title poem, where the comparison is drawn to the moment of release in slinging sacks of grain onto a trailer." [4]
Poet William Logan, in his review for The New York Times Book Review, wrote "'Human Chain' is far from Heaney's best book — the short and short-winded sequences rarely smolder like a peat bog afire underground. He's still good at the character sketches from the Irish hinterlands, the deft evocations of common objects (the evidence of the ordinary bewitches him), the elegies and funerals that increasingly have dominated his work. Troubled by the losses memory is heir to, most moving on his father's decline and death, the poems are evocations of a life now past." [5] Irish Poet Eamon Grennan in his review for The Irish Times, wrote "As always, of course, it's his [Heaney] language, as it translates the world into a world of words, that is a continuous instruction and delight, its colloquial ease given heft by its unabashed rootedness in the eloquence of literature – which is here, as it has always been, a field he paces with the same alert poise with which he might scan the intimate acres of Bellaghy or Glanmore." [6]
It won the Forward Poetry Prize Best Collection 2010 award [7] and the Irish Times Poetry Now Award for 2011, this was Heaney's second Poetry Now Award, having previously won in 2007 for District and Circle . [8] It was also shortlisted for the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize. [9]
Seamus Justin Heaney was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is Death of a Naturalist (1966), his first major published volume. American poet Robert Lowell described him as "the most important Irish poet since Yeats", and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have said that he was "the greatest poet of our age". Robert Pinsky has stated that "with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller." Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world".
Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet.
Richard Kerr Murphy was an Anglo-Irish poet.
Helen Vendler was an American academic, writer and literary critic. She was a professor of English language and history at Boston University, Cornell, Harvard, and other universities. Her academic focus was critical analysis of poetry and she studied poets from Shakespeare and George Herbert to modern poets such as Wallace Stevens and Seamus Heaney. Her technique was close reading, which she described as "reading from the point of view of a writer".
Death of a Naturalist (1966) is a collection of poems written by Seamus Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. The collection was Heaney's first major published volume, and includes ideas that he had presented at meetings of The Belfast Group. Death of a Naturalist won the Cholmondeley Award, the Gregory Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
District and Circle is a poetry collection by Seamus Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. It was published in 2006 and won the 2006 T. S. Eliot Prize, the most prestigious poetry award in the UK. The collection also won the Irish Times "Poetry Now Award".
"Pangur Bán" is an Old Irish poem written in about the 9th century at or near Reichenau Abbey, in what is now Germany, by an Irish monk about his cat. Pangur Bán, 'White Pangur', is the cat's name, Pangur possibly meaning 'a fuller'. Although the poem is anonymous, it bears similarities to the poetry of Sedulius Scottus, prompting speculation that he is the author. In eight verses of four lines each, the author compares the cat's happy hunting with his own scholarly pursuits.
Bernard O'Donoghue FRSL is a contemporary Irish poet and academic.
Wintering Out (1972) is a poetry collection by Seamus Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.
North (1975) is a collection of poems written by Seamus Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. It was the first of his works that directly dealt with the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and it looks frequently to the past for images and symbols relevant to the violence and political unrest of that time. Heaney has been recorded reading this collection on the Seamus Heaney Collected Poems album.
Station Island is the sixth collection of original poetry written by Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. It is dedicated to the Northern Irish playwright Brian Friel. The collection was first published in the United Kingdom and Ireland in 1984 by Faber & Faber and was then published in America by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1985. Seamus Heaney was recorded reading this collection on the Seamus Heaney Collected Poems album.
Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish is a version of the Irish poem Buile Shuibhne written by Seamus Heaney, based on an earlier edition and translation by J. G. O'Keeffe. The work was first published in 1983 and won the 1985 PEN Translation Prize for poetry.
New Selected Poems 1966–1987 is a poetry collection by Seamus Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. It was published in 1990 by Faber and Faber. It includes selections from each of Heaney's seven first volumes of verse:
Dennis O'Driscoll was an Irish poet, essayist, critic and editor. Regarded as one of the best European poets of his time, Eileen Battersby considered him "the lyric equivalent of William Trevor" and a better poet "by far" than Raymond Carver. Gerard Smyth regarded him as "one of poetry's true champions and certainly its most prodigious archivist. His book on Seamus Heaney is regarded as the definitive biography of the Nobel laureate.
Collected Poems is a spoken-word recording of the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney reading his own work. It was released by RTÉ to mark his 70th birthday, which occurred on 13 April 2009. The fifteen-CD boxed set spans 556 tracks in over twelve hours of oral performance by the poet. The entire work was also released on one disc in MP3 format.
The Poetry Now Award is an annual literary prize presented for the best single volume of poetry by an Irish poet. The €5,000 award was first given in 2005 and is presented during annual Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown poetry festivals. From 2005 to 2011, it was bestowed during the Poetry Now international poetry festival which was held in March or April each year. In 2012 and 2013, the award was given during the Mountains to Sea dlr Book Festival, in September. The award is sponsored by The Irish Times newspaper.
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation is a verse translation of the Old English epic poem Beowulf into modern English by the Irish poet and playwright Seamus Heaney. It was published in 1999 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and Faber and Faber, and won that year's Whitbread Book of the Year Award.
Opened Ground: Poems 1966–1996 is a 1998 poetry collection by Seamus Heaney, published by Faber and Faber. It was published to replace his earlier 1990 collection titled New Selected Poems 1966–1987, including poems from said collection and later poems published after its release.