WINTERING OUT

With Wintering Out, published in 1972, Seamus Heaney confirmed his place at the forefront of a new generation of poets, his voice maturing and finding a new pitch in poems that deal with place and language, such as ‘Anahorish’, ‘Broagh’ and ‘Gifts of Rain’. In ‘The Tollund Man’, the poet delves deeper into the imagery of the bog, using the figure of a Danish bog body to explore ideas of history, violence and tribal loyalty – themes that would be developed to powerful effect in Heaney’s next, and most politically charged volume, North.

‘Keyed and pitched unlike any other significant poet at work in the language anywhere’ Harold Bloom, Times Literary Supplement