STATION ISLAND

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Paperback issue. Publisher's original patterned card covers printed in black and red. An excellent very near fine copy, the binding square and tight with just a hint of rubbing to the extremities. The contents are clean throughout and without previous owner's marks. The first edition was issued simultaneously in hardcover and paperback.

Signed by Seamus Heaney in black ink on the title page. 'Station Island', Heaney's first volume after 'Field Work' (1979) is centred around its title sequence, "a sequence of dream encounters with familiar ghosts, set on Station Island on Lough Derg in Co. Donegal" (from Heaney's note). It stages a series of encounters with figures from the poet's own past, as well as encounters with earlier Irish writers, most notably William Carleton, Patrick Kavanagh and, at the end, James Joyce. The sequence, which owes much to Dante and frequently calls upon the Italian poet's trademark terza rima, is one of Heaney's greatest achievements. On either side of the title sequence are a section of lyrics and 'Sweeney Redivivus', a sequence in which the poet's voice once again (after the earlier 'Sweeney Astray' [1983]) merges with "the seventh-century Ulster king who was transformed into a bird-man and exiled to the trees by the curse of St Ronan". [Brandes and Durkan A36b].