Widely regarded as the finest poet of his generation, Seamus Heaney is the subject of numerous critical studies, but no book-length portrait has appeared before now. Through his own lively and eloquent reminiscences, Stepping Stones retraces the poet’s steps from his first exploratory testing of the ground as an infant to what he called his “moon-walk” to the podium to receive the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. It also fascinatingly charts his post-Nobel life and is supplemented with a number of photographs, many from the Heaney family album and published here for the first time. In response to firm but subtle questioning from Dennis O’Driscoll, Heaney sheds a personal light on his work (poems, essays, translations, plays) and on the artistic and ethical challenges he faced during the dark years of the Ulster Troubles. Combining the spontaneity of animated conversation with the considered qualities of the best autobiographical writing, Stepping Stones provides an original, diverting, and absorbing store of reflections and recollections. Scholars and general readers alike are brought closer to the work, life, and creative development of a charismatic and lavishly gifted poet whose latest collection, District and Circle, was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2007.

Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney

Biographies & Memoirs

O'Driscoll, Dennis

Arts & Literature

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Widely regarded as the finest poet of his generation, Seamus Heaney is the subject of numerous critical studies, but no book-length portrait has appeared before now. Through his own lively and eloquent reminiscences, Stepping Stones retraces Heaney's steps from his first exploratory testing of the ground as an infant to what he called his "moon-walk" to the podium to receive the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. It also fascinatingly charts his post-Nobel life and is supplemented with a number of photographs, many from the Heaney family album and published here for the first time. In response to firm but subtle questioning from Dennis O'Driscoll, Heaney sheds a personal light on his work (poems, essays, translations, plays) and on the artistic and ethical challenges he faced during the dark years of the Ulster Troubles. Combining the spontaneity of animated conversation with the considered qualities of the best autobiographical writing, Stepping Stones provides an original, diverting, and absorbing store of reflections and recollections. Scholars and general readers alike are brought closer to the work, life, and creative development of a charismatic and lavishly gifted poet whose latest collection, District and Circle, was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry in 2006.

Widely regarded as the finest poet of his generation, Seamus Heaney is the subject of numerous critical studies; but no book-length portrait has appeared until now. Through his own lively and eloquent reminiscences, Stepping Stones retraces the poet's steps from his early works, through to his receipt of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature and his post-Nobel life. It is supplemented with a large number of photographs, many from the Heaney family album and published here for the first time. In response to firm but subtle questioning from Dennis O'Driscoll, Seamus Heaney sheds a personal light on his work (poems, essays, translations, plays) and on the artistic and ethical challenges he faced, providing an original, diverting and absorbing store of reflections, opinions and recollections.

Stepping Stones

Faber&Faber

Dennis O'Driscoll's third collection contains some of his most accomplished work to date, written with his characteristic blend of poignancy and dry wit. The book is notable for its engagement with contemporary life in both its benign and brutal aspects. Whether evoking the victims of Ulster violence or mapping the rituals of everyday existence, `Long Story Short' confirms that Dennis O'Driscoll "possesses one of the neatest, most original and nimblest ways with words in Irish verse today" (Derek Stanford, Books Ireland).

Long Story Short

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Dufour Editions

Exemplary Damages' is as fine and varied a collection as its five predecessors. It captures contemporary attitudes towards life, love and God with unfaltering accuracy in styles which range from the richly sensuous to the mercilessly mordant. Whether depicting a group of middle-aged lads' at tea break or struggling to comprehend the English spoken at an EU seminar, Dennis O'Driscoll's skill in observation and metaphor succeeds in conveying humour and pathos with an unsentimental robustness.
Born in Thurles, County Tipperary in 1954, Dennis O'Driscoll has received wide recognition for his previous collections, including a Lannan Literary Award in 1999. A selection of his essays and reviews, Troubled Thoughts, Majestic Dreams' (Gallery Press), appeared in 2001. A civil servant since the age of 16, he works for Irish Customs in Dublin.

Exemplary Damages

Anvil Press Poetry

POETRY BOOK SOCIETY SPECIAL COMMENDATION Dennis O'Driscoll is among the finest and most popular poets of his generation. New and Selected Poems shows him to be a poet of humanity and wit whose observant, rhythmically supple poetry is attuned to the tragedies and comedies of contemporary life. One of the book's highlights is "The Bottom Line", a multi-voiced and multifaceted portrait of business managers and bureaucrats. Closing with a generous selection of previously unpublished work, New and Selected Poems - which follows Dennis O'Driscoll's acclaimed Exemplary Damages, chosen as a Book of the Year by Seamus Heaney in 2002 - makes for a compelling collection, wide in its appeal and yet imbued with a distinctive and often startling world-view. Born in Thurles, County Tipperary in 1954, Dennis O'Driscoll has published six collections of poetry and a selection of his essays and reviews, Troubled Thoughts, Majestic Dreams (Gallery Press). He received a Lannan Literary Award in 1999, the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005 and the O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry in 2006. A civil servant since the age of 16, he works for Irish Customs in Dublin.

New and Selected Poems

“Dennis O’Driscoll . . . is one of the most interesting poets now writing in English.”—Adam Kirsch, Slate"Dennis O'Driscoll has produced an extraordinary body of work...Some of his poems have already achieved the status of classics."—Poetry Ireland Review "O'Driscoll's mind...ruminates on experience with alacrity, humility, and an unwillingness to pontificate. His talent -- which could equally grace a novel -- should stand the test of time."—Poetry Review"His terrain is, in effect, without borders: mordant, open, sharp, generous, and sad."—The Guardian "[O'Driscoll's] poems dance deftly on the tongue.... The collection offers a cornucopia of visual and aural delights, a Whitmanic appreciation of both nature and human creation that nevertheless recognizes the global dangers posed by the latter.... O'Driscoll's U.S. debut is a bracing introduction to a poet whose work American readers have gone without for too long."—Library JournalDennis O’Driscoll’s poetry is invigorating, grounded, and modern, with an ear attuned to the tragedies and comedies of contemporary life in a “globalized” Ireland. When Reality Check was published last year in the United Kingdom, it was named one of the top ten books of 2007 by The Independent of London.O’Driscoll, who tours regularly in the United States, excels at stripping away stereotypes. He incorporates the language of the business world into his poetry, often to comic effect. His job as a civil servant for nearly forty years, “a lifetime’s fug of arbitrations, ordinances, inter-agency liaisons,” has made him privy to the intricacies of bureaucracy, diplomacy, and commerce, and has given him a knack for transforming timeless themes through “workaday words” and present-day concerns.Lean on the green recycle binin the yard where roses run amok,scent intensified by last night’s rain . . .Rest on the laurels of your elbows.Consent to mind and body goingtheir ways amicably, a trial separation.Dennis O’Driscoll, author of ten books, is one of Ireland’s most popular poets and critics. According to Poetry Review, he is “one of the best-read men in the Western world.”

Reality Check

Anvil Press

“Dennis O’Driscoll . . . is one of the most interesting poets now writing in English.”—Adam Kirsch, Slate
"Dennis O'Driscoll has produced an extraordinary body of work...Some of his poems have already achieved the status of classics." —Poetry Ireland Review "O'Driscoll's mind...ruminates on experience with alacrity, humility, and an unwillingness to pontificate. His talent -- which could equally grace a novel -- should stand the test of time." —Poetry Review
"His terrain is, in effect, without borders: mordant, open, sharp, generous, and sad." —The Guardian "[O'Driscoll's] poems dance deftly on the tongue.... The collection offers a cornucopia of visual and aural delights, a Whitmanic appreciation of both nature and human creation that nevertheless recognizes the global dangers posed by the latter.... O'Driscoll's U.S. debut is a bracing introduction to a poet whose work American readers have gone without for too long." —Library Journal
Dennis O’Driscoll’s poetry is invigorating, grounded, and modern, with an ear attuned to the tragedies and comedies of contemporary life in a “globalized” Ireland. When Reality Check was published last year in the United Kingdom, it was named one of the top ten books of 2007 by The Independent of London.
O’Driscoll, who tours regularly in the United States, excels at stripping away stereotypes. He incorporates the language of the business world into his poetry, often to comic effect. His job as a civil servant for nearly forty years, “a lifetime’s fug of arbitrations, ordinances, inter-agency liaisons,” has made him privy to the intricacies of bureaucracy, diplomacy, and commerce, and has given him a knack for transforming timeless themes through “workaday words” and present-day concerns.
Lean on the green recycle bin in the yard where roses run amok, scent intensified by last night’s rain . . . Rest on the laurels of your elbows. Consent to mind and body going their ways amicably, a trial separation.
Dennis O’Driscoll, author of ten books, is one of Ireland’s most popular poets and critics. According to Poetry Review, he is “one of the best-read men in the Western world.”

Copper Canyon Press

Introduction by Seamus Heaney"Dennis O'Driscoll's long devotion to the stripped-down idiom of Eastern European poets such as Miroslav Holub and Wislawa Szymborska and an American like Marianne Moore encouraged a style that opted for the plain before the elevated, the colloquial before the eloquent. Which is not to say that his work lacked seriousness: in its total alertness to the present moment, the cultural, social and economic life of contemporary Ireland, it was a unique phenomenon. If it was satirical – as it often is in Dear Life – it was not contemptuous. It registered the great spiritual changes that occurred during his lifetime, as the country moved from being a rural, religious, mainly agricultural place to an urban, suburban, secular destination for multinationals."—Seamus Heaney, from the Introduction"Dennis O'Driscoll has produced an extraordinary body of work. . . . Some of his poems have already achieved the status of classics."—Poetry Ireland Review
"[One] of the most interesting poets now writing in English. O'Driscoll's poetry has the rare virtue of making us feel that most other poets are forcing things a little, striving for effect. He writes directly, naturally, about the emotions that are closest to us and, for that very reason, go unobserved: how we actually feel about work and possessions and aging."—Slate
Irish poet Dennis O'Driscoll's new poems engage with contemporary issues—the internet era, the compensation culture, global warming—as well as the timeless topics of working and aging, loving and dying, God and Mammon. His poems give voice to twenty-first century Western attitudes towards religion, while the ambitious title-sequence attempts a rigorous exploration of the purpose of human life.
From "Valentine":
Back in hospital on this fateful date,but to no complications for once, I am discharged in good time to lighta candle on the kitchen table, decantyour Valentine's glass of sparkling wine, sear the steak, sauté the onions, bakepotatoes till their paunchy waistcoats loosen,launch the gravy boat on its salt voyage,let mushrooms set sail on melting butter . . . 
Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) died suddenly on Christmas Eve, 2012. He was the author of nine collections of poetry as well as a book of interviews with Seamus Heaney, Stepping Stones. Poetry Review famously—and deservedly—called O'Driscoll "one of the best-read men in the Western world."

Dear Life

"O'Driscoll is a quietly exciting, subtly intelligent poet."—Poetry London
"O'Driscoll's crisp, unobtrusively musical precision gets to the heart of so many subjects, large and small."—The Guardian
"O'Driscoll is a real poet: his lines stay with you, and crop up unbidden in your mind as you go about your day."—Poetry Ireland Review
Update, the final collection of work by the late Dennis O'Driscoll, weaves a memoir of his past into the state of the world today. The poems embark on a vivid journey through consumerism, our environment, and our fragile existence. Update is O'Driscoll's parting gift, granting a shimmering glimpse of what it truly means to be human.
Ticking the Boxes
Tick the relevant boxes in this census form tonight if you are still in the land of the living at that time. You must remain in suspense until then.
You have all morning still. You have all afternoon long. One continuous hour. A whole six minutes. Twenty-eight precious seconds left. Three. Two. One.
In which to lose your job. Your citizenship. Your house. Your spouse. Your child. Your mind. Your sight. Your faith. Your life.
Count on absolutely nothing yet.
Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012), editor of Poetry Ireland Review, was the author of ten collections of poetry as well as book of interviews with Seamus Heaney, Stepping Stones. Poetry Review called O'Driscoll "one of the best-read men in the Western world."

Update

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by O'Driscoll, Dennis. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by O'Driscoll, Dennis

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by O'Driscoll, Dennis. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney

Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney

Stepping Stones

Long Story Short

Exemplary Damages

New and Selected Poems

Reality Check

Reality Check

Dear Life

Update