Search

Skip to main content Accessibility help

Only show content I have access to (0)

Chapters (1)

Over 3 years (1)

From year:

To year:

Apply

Literature (1)

Cambridge University Press (1)

1 results

Chapter 16 - In Print
from IV - Publishing
- By Nathan Suhr-Sytsma
Edited by Geraldine Higgins, Emory University, Atlanta
Book:

Seamus Heaney in Context

Published online:

15 March 2021

Print publication:

01 April 2021, pp 177-187
- Chapter
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
Summary

Shortly after publishing three poems in the New Statesman in 1964, Seamus Heaney received a letter from Charles Monteith, poetry editor of the prestigious London publishing house Faber and Faber, which he later said ‘was like getting mail from the Almighty God’. Heaney went on to publish not only with Faber, but also with numerous small presses, foremost among them the Gallery Press in Ireland. Concentrating on the publication of Heaney’s poetry in book form, from Death of a Naturalist (Faber, 1966) to The Last Walk (Gallery, 2013), this chapter considers how the poet’s self-reflexive engagement with print both expressed and furthered his faith in literature. This consideration pairs attention to Heaney’s metaphors for publication, including in such poems as ‘Broagh’ and ‘The Bookcase’, with a few striking instances of the material forms his work has taken.