Books

First edition, first impression, inscribed by the poet on the front free endpaper with the final quatrain of the titular poem: "Bill - 'Keep your eye clear / as the bleb of the icicle, / trust the feel of what nubbed treasure / your hands have known.' Seamus Heaney, 12 March 1994". William B. Ewert (1943-2001) issued several limited editions and broadsides of Heaney's poems in the 1990s. The lines in Heaney's inscription exemplify his interest in hands, touches, and haptic knowledge so central to his poetry, from the pen that rests "between my finger and my thumb" in "Digging", to "the stuff gathering under my fingernails" in "Unwinding". The theme is explored in the bog poems in North, particularly in Heaney's descriptions of the Bog Queen (whose "body is braille") and the Grauballe Man ("the red horn / of his nails // hung in the scales / with beauty and atrocity"). Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Light browning to front endpapers; unclipped jacket faintly sunned: a near-fine copy in near-fine jacket. Brandes & Durkan A12a.

North is a collection of poems by Seamus Heaney, published in 1975. The book explores themes of identity, history, and the Troubles in Northern Ireland.