Seamus Heaney

Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney, son of the farm and County Derry, put his spade in forty years ago with a first poem called "Digging." It was dense and sure, with a sense of place and earth that turned heads around the world.

In the decades since, Heaney's rich, vivid poetry has ranged over myth and legend, politics and violence and the classics. Now, he's back to earth and farm and sweat and tools.

Not the marshmallow, rubber-dagger stuff, he says, but the feel of a sledge hammer, red meat and white string, the harrow pin and collie's stare - as it was in the beginning, he writes — but telling all there is to know.

Hear the great Seamus Heaney talk about his new collection, "District and Circle."

Guests:

Seamus Heaney, Nobel Laureate in Literature, Irish Poet, Translator, and Essayist. Author of numerous collections of poetry and prose including: Death of a Naturalist, Door into the Dark, North, Field Work, Station Island, Seeing Things, The Spirit Level, and his most recent, "District and Circle."