The Haw Lantern

Poems exploring the theme of loss are joined by meditations on the conscience of the writer and exercises in an allegorical vein which will both surprise and delight the many admirers of his previous work.

Seamus Heaney describes the haw lantern as "small light for small people" but there is more than tiny illumination emanating from one of Ireland's premier poets. Heaney peppers this short collection of poems with crafty language and natural objects: "I heard the hatchet's differentiated/Accurate cut, the crack, the sigh/And collapse of what luxuriated/Through the shocked tips and wreckage of it all." The Haw Lantern won England's Whitbread Prize in 1987.