Just wonderful

The early work of one of our greatest poets, read beautifully by Heaney in that wonderful lilting voice

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Beautiful

Beautifully read atmospheric poems to picture yourself in. Definitely recommend any of his writings to friends and family

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Stunning

I listen to these poems going to sleep. There is something about the imagery in Heaney's poetry which is so raw and candid that you will be sometimes repulsed and other times amazed and affected. Perhaps the most brilliant poet of the past 100 years heretofore.

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stunning collection from one of the greatest

stunning collection from one of the greatest. great energy and depth in his story telling

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1 person found this helpful

Fix: Here is a chapter guide!

Beautifully self narrated however as noted by other reviews, it was a pity the chapter titles do not reference the poem name. To address this and help others, the below details chapter references for the 4 books as well as some of Heaney's best work:

Death Of a Naturalist (Chapter 1-37)
Chapter 1: Digging
Chapter 2: Death Of a Naturalist
Chapter 3: The Barn
Chapter 5: Blackberry Picking
Chapter 10: Mid-Term Break
Chapter 37: Personal Helicon

Door Into The Dark (Chapter 38-71)
Chapter 48: Requiem for the Croppies
Chapter 71: Bogland

Wintering Out (Chapter 72-117)
Chapter 95: The Tollund Man

North (Chapter 118-160)
Chapter 118-119: Mossbawn - Two Poems in Dedication (Sunlight & The Seed Cutters)
Chapter 122: Funeral Rites
Chapter 123: North
Chapter 158: Summer 1969

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11 people found this helpful

Close to the bone

Heaney's poetry sinks deep and touches nerves. I'm not a big poetry reader but this paints stories I can relate to.

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1 person found this helpful

Marvellous poetry read by the poet

Seamus Heaney reads his own early poetry. Wonderful poetry, beautifully read. What more can I say?

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3 people found this helpful

Heaney

It’s a pity the names of each of the poems are not with the chapter numbers

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29 people found this helpful

Lazy Audiobook Production From Faber

The three audiobook editions of Seamus Heaney's Collected Poems present the author reading his first eleven poetry collections in their entirety, plus selections from the twelfth. The recordings of the first eleven collections were made in 2009 at Beacon Studios in Dublin, and it was, according to the executive producer of the recordings, Lorelei Harris, a 'mammoth task'. Also included in volume three are live recordings of Heaney reading eleven poems from his twelfth collection. One interesting feature of listening to these recordings while following along with the printed books is that some of the poems differ slightly from the originally published works - not by much, just very occasionally he changes or adds a word here and there. Given that these are such important and wonderful recordings of Heaney's poetic work, it is a great shame that Faber couldn't be bothered to go to the effort of adding in chapter titles. Thus, one stands little to no chance of finding a specific poem as volume one has 160 unnamed chapters, volume two has 230 unnamed chapters, and volume three has 177 unnamed chapters. While one cannot fault the content of these three audiobooks, it is unfortunate that Faber doesn't show the same care for their audiobooks that they do for their print books. For an example of how to do it properly, see the audiobook edition of Paul Muldoon's 'Selected Poems 1968 - 2014', which is correctly chaptered and also published by Faber, so they could do a better job of chaptering Heaney's Collected Poems if they wanted to.

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