Dispatch from Seamus Heaney HomePlace can take up to five working days.

Still Life, a dazzling collection written in the six months before his death in October 2019. Each of these poems begins with a painting (Canaletto, Poussin, Cézanne, Monet and Velázquez as well as contemporary Irish artists). By contemplating it, or by looking closely or remembering carefully, his mind roams, embracing parts of his days and, often, observations in the course of a daily walk with his wife, Deirdre, near their home in Belfast. Still Life stares mortality in the face. A book of uncommon bravery, it is a hymn to art and to the ordinary beauties of a blessed life.

Author: Ciaran Carson