Description: Inspired by Seamus Heaney's poems, and notably by his version of the medieval Irish saga Buile Suibhne, the American photographer Rachel Giese has produced a stunning portfolio of pictures of the northern Irish landscape, covering the boundaries of Mad Sweeney's original kingdom of Dal-Arie. She has resourcefully followed the clues to topography and the natural world in Sweeney's wanderings, and gathered together 34 exceptional photographs which Seamus Heaney has matched with extracts and quotations from his Sweeney Astray. He has revised many of his stanzas for inclusion in Sweeney's Flight, and as an entity the book represents a fruitful and imaginative collaboration between poet and photographer which is of great interest and beauty. The whole of the revised text of Sweeney Astray is printed in the second part of the book. Mr Heaney has written a preface to this joint work in which he reflects on the relation of images and words, and his impetus to 'snip lyric leaves off the old narrative boughs'. Sweeney's Flight has been finely printed in duotone to the same high quality as Ms Giese's previous collection of photographs, The Donegal Pictures.

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