North

With this collection, first published in 1975, Heaney located a myth which allowed him to articulate a vision of Ireland—its people, history, and landscape—and which gave his poems direction, cohesion, and cumulative power. In North, the Irish experience is refracted through images drawn from different parts of the Northern European experience, and the idea of the north allows the poet to contemplate the violence on his home ground in relation to memories of the Scandinavian and English invasions which have marked Irish history so indelibly.