'An irresistibly coherent book which celebrates the rising and the raising of the human spirit.' Michael Hofmann, The Times'If any poetry written today can have this'redemptive effect' - as Heaney in his critical writing has begun to claim it can - then this is it.' Mick Imlah, Independent on Sunday

Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. Death of a Naturalist, his first collection, appeared in 1966, and since then he has published poetry, criticism and translations which have established him as one of the leading poets of his generation. He has twice won the Whitbread Book of the Year, for The Spirit Level (1996) and Beowulf (1999). In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. District and Circle, his eleventh collection of poems, was published in 2006 and was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize.