Field Work (poetry)
First edition (Faber and Faber)
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| Author | Seamus Heaney |
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| Language | English |
| Publisher | Faber and Faber |
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Publication date
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1979 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 80 pp |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | North |
| Followed by | Station Island |
Field Work (1979) is the fifth poetry collection by Seamus Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Field Work was Heaney’s first collection of poetry since his most celebrated collection, North in 1975. Field Work can largely be read as record of Heaney’s four years (1972-1976) living in rural County Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland after leaving the violence of The Troubles. Heaney had previously been living in Belfast as a professor at Queen's University. Denis O’Donoghue has referred to this period as "years of retreat only in the religious or monastic sense, a quiet time for thinking and renewal. Certain themes were sequestered, so that Heaney might start out again from first principles and deep affiliations."Joshua Weiner writes: "While the move south seemed to some a deliberate withdrawal from a previous political commitment to fight the British presence in Ireland, Field Work indicates rather a growing commitment to stay engaged, but to do so by maintaining the long view, which asks questions more than it assumes positions."
In an 1981 interview with Frank Kinahan, Heaney said Field Work "was an attempt to try to do something deliberately: to change the note and to lengthen the line, and to bring elements of my social self, elements of my usual nature, which is more convivial than most of the poems before that might suggest, to try to bring all that into play.
Dr. Rand Brandes tells the story of the title Field Work in The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney. Heaney originally wanted to name the work “Polder.” His editor, Charles Monteith, insisted that Heaney change the title because readers may not be able to pronounce the word. Heaney then wanted the title “Easter Water,” but this name was also discarded in favor of the final name: Field Work. Heaney said of the final title: "I gave Field Work that title partly because there’s an element of samplings in it. But I think there’s an opener note in it as well. What holds Field Work together—this is only my view of it—is a certain ease of the voice." Heaney also provided his own explanation of how all his titles came about: “What usually happens is that I start to look for one [a title] once a ‘critical mass’ of poems gets written. I find that if I have a working title at that stage – say when half a volume is in existence – the title itself can help in shaping, or at least inclining and suggesting, the poems to come.”
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