Recorded in 2009, Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney reads his first eleven collections of poems in their entirety. In this new edition Faber has added live readings by the poet of eleven poems from his final collection, Human Chain (2010), to complete the collection. 'His is "close-up" poetry - close up to thought, to the world, to the emotions. Few writers at work today, in verse or fiction, can give the sense of rich, fecund, lived life that Heaney does.' John Banville 'More than any other poet since Wordsworth he can make us understand that the outside world is not outside, but what we are made of.' John Carey 'Heaney's voice, by turns mythological and journalistic, rural and sophisticated, reminiscent and impatient, stern and yielding, curt and expansive, is one of a suppleness almost equal to consciousness itself.' Helen Vendler 'There are few poets whose reading voice is so crucial to the poems' effect' - Bernard O'Donoghue, The Irish Times. Death of a Naturalist Door into the Dark Wintering Out North Field Work Station Island (part one) Station island (part two & three) The Haw Lantern Seeing Things (part one) Seeing Things (part two) The Spirit Level (part one) The Spirit Level (part two) Electric Light (part one) Electric Light (part two) District and Circle Human Chain

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.