North

With this new collection Seamus Heaney has found a myth which allows him to articulate a vision of Ireland -its people, history, and landscape- and which gives the book direction, cohesion and cumulative power. Here the Irish experience is refracted through images drawn from different parts of the Northern European experience, and the idea of the northallows the poet to contemplate the violence on his home ground in relation to memorries of the Scandinavian and English invasions which have marked Irish history so indelibly.