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Sweeney Astray

Seamus Heaney

Sweeney Astray is Seamus Heaney's version of the medieval Irish work Buile Suibhne - the first complete translation since 1913. Its hero, Mad Sweeney, undergoes a series of purgatorial adventures after he is cursed by a saint and turned into a bird at the Battle of Moira. The poetry spoken by the mad king, exiled to the trees and the slopes, is among the richest and most immediately appealing in the whole canon of Gaelic literature.

Sweeney Astray not only restores to us a work of historical and literary importance but offers the genius of one of our greatest living poets to reinforce its claims on the reader of contemporary literature.

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. Death of a Naturalist, his first collection of poems, appeared in 1966, and was followed by poetry, criticism and translations which established him as the leading poet of his generation. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and twice won the Whitbread Book of the Year, for The Spirit Level (1996) and Beowulf (1999). Stepping Stones, a book of interviews conducted by Dennis O'Driscoll, appeared in 2008; Human Chain, his last volume of poems, was awarded the 2010 Forward Prize for Best Collection. He died in 2013. His translation of Virgil's Aeneid Book VI was published posthumously in 2016 to critical acclaim, followed in 2018 by 100 Poems, a selection of poems from his entire career, chosen by his family.

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Sweeney Astray

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

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The Poems of Seamus Heaney

North

The Letters of Seamus Heaney

The Letters of Seamus Heaney

The Translations of Seamus Heaney

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The Haw Lantern

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100 Poems

The Cure at Troy

Death of a Naturalist

New Selected Poems 1988-2013

Human Chain

District and Circle

The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables: Translated by Seamus Heaney

W. B. Yeats

Beowulf

Death of a Naturalist

The Rattle Bag: An Anthology of Poetry

The Burial at Thebes

The School Bag

W. B. Yeats

Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971 - 2001

Door into the Dark

The Redress of Poetry

Beowulf

New Selected Poems 1966-1987

Wintering Out

Opened Ground

The Spirit Level

North

Station Island

Field Work

Electric Light

Government of the Tongue