Seamus Heaney's Poetry: Putting Together the Definitive Collection

Wadham Emeritus Fellow, Bernard O'Donoghue once walked the College grounds with renowned Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, and so took on the task of editing a definitive collection of his poetry as both a scholar and a friend. Working alongside co-editors Rosie Lavan and Matthew Hollis, the collection, titled 'The Poems of Seamus Heaney', was released in October 2025 and was quickly greeted with praise as a landmark release. The Guardian extolled its "loving expertise", and said, "the resulting volume lets us see Heaney’s work, whose ripples we are still learning to navigate, for the colossal achievement it is..." In January 2026, the Warden welcomed students and alumni to the Holywell Music Room, for a chance to hear Bernard O'Donoghue and Matthew Hollis articulate how they approached the sea of materials, published and unpublished, complete and fragmentary, in the Heaney corpus. Watch our complete video recording to hear how meticulous scholarship combined with artful attention to Heaney's creative genius to produce this extraordinary, definitive collection.