<p>This volume contains a selection of work from each of Seamus Heaney''s published books of poetry up to and including the Whitbread prize-winning collection, <b>The Haw Lantern</b> (1987).<br><br>''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, <i>lived</i> life that Heaney does.'' John Banville<br><br>''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</p>