num_pages: 44
description: For the fortieth anniversary of its publication, in May 2006, Faber are reissuing Seamus Heaney's classic first collection, Death of a Naturalist, which on its appearance in 1966 won the Cholmondeley Award, the E.C. Gregory Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.'His words give us the soil-reek of Ireland, the colourful violence of his childhood on a farm in Derry. The full-blooded energy of these poems makes Death of a Naturalist the best first book of poems I've read for some time.' - C.B. Cox in the Spectator'The power and precision of his best poems are a delight, and as a first collection Death of a Naturalist is outstanding [...] His subject is those things which are inherent or inherited. What he praises is to be praised in his own work.' - Christopher Ricks, New Statesman'Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,To stare big-eyed Narcissus, into some springIs beneath all adult dignity. I rhymeTo see myself, to set the darkness echoing.'
language: English
title: Death of a Naturalist
titlecomplete: Death of a Naturalist (Faber Poetry)
genres: Fiction, Ireland, Nature, Poetry, Literature, Classics, Nobel Prize, Irish Literature, 20th Century, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 3680
awards: awardedAt: -63129600000
name: Somerset Maugham Award, awardedAt: -94665600000
name: Cholmondeley Award, awardedAt: -126201600000
name: Eric Gregory Award, awardedAt: -63129600000
name: Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
publisher: Faber and Faber