A Boy Driving His Father to Confession

Limited first edition. Thin 8vo. [12pp]. Publisher's stapled white card wraps, printed in black. With blank beige preliminary leaf interleaved between limitation and half-title pages. No. 86 of a total edition of 150 copies printed by the Haslemere Printing Company on Glastonbury laid paper, the first 50 of which were signed by the poet.

This copy was subsequently signed by Heaney to title-page at his 2006 Edinburgh Book Festival appearances. Exceptionally rare, especially in mint condition.

A heretofore-uncollected confessional poem of a son's oedipal animus toward his father and a repudiation of his old man's dependence on Catholic rituals. Influenced by Robert Lowell in both form and content, it was composed in heroic couplets for submission to a Belfast Group workshop in April 1965. The group, made up of students, faculty, and writers from the local community, met informally at Philip Hobsbaum's home near Queen's University, where the English lecturer taught. The following year Heaney's first published collection, Death of a Naturalist, gathered three further 'father' poems: 'Digging,' 'Follower,' and 'Ancestral Photograph,' signifying the father's central placement within the poet's oeuvre.

[Brandes & Durkan A7]