Poem of the Week:
'Song' by Seamus Heaney
5 February 2024
This week, our Poem of the Week is Seamus Heaney’s ‘Song’, from his 1979 collection, Field Work.
‘Song’
A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes.
There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.
Copyright © The Estate of Seamus Heaney, 1979. Used by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd. All rights reserved.
‘Song’ by Seamus Heaney is from Field Work
For more of Seamus Heaney’s poetry, read 12 Poems from 12 Collections on the Faber Journal.
Buy the Book
Field Work by Seamus Heaney is further affirmation of the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet’s pre-eminence in both the depth and immediacy that poetry is able to offer: ‘I ate the day / Deliberately, that its tang / Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.’
About the Author
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.
Read MoreAbout the Author
