The School Bag

by Seamus Heaney (Editor), Ted Hughes (Editor)

The new anthology is designed to present a great range of poetry in a fresh and accessible way. Allowing no more than one poem, or passage of poetry, to any poet, the editors have chosen not only work from the established canon of poetry in the English language, but examples, too, from the different languages of Scotland, Ireland and Wales, arranging them by subject matter rather than chronology. The results show the same confidence of taste, breadth of interest and sheer passion that made their previous collaboration so successful.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies

560 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 1997

About the author

Works of Irish poet Seamus Justin Heaney reflect landscape, culture, and political crises of his homeland and include the collections Wintering Out (1972) and Field Work (1979) as well as a translation of Beowulf (1999). He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995.

This writer and lecturer won this prize "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."

Heaney on Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Toby · Rating 2 out of 5]

After the joyous rumbustiousness of The Rattle Bag, The School Bag feels an altogether more staid affair. Of course this is reflected in the titles of the two books and there is a rather more didactic feel to The School Bag, as if to say "OK, you've had your fun, now sit down and read some educationally improving poetry." It also has something of a feel of a parlour game that Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney decided to play together - only one poem from a poet allowed and all of the poems to be joined together in a thematic chain.

The plus of the anthology is that, playing by these rules, a good 90% or so of the poems were new to me, although I can't say that there were that many new ones that really made an impact. One or two made me wonder why they had been chosen at all. All in all it felt a little like the B-sides of those that had made it into The Rattle Bag. Just once Hughes and Heaney slipped up. John Clare's The Badger somehow made it into both volumes.

[Donald · Rating 5 out of 5]

I spent the school year reading this anthology to my students. It's wonderful, just wonderful.

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney present a collection of varied poetry from ancient times to modern. A good place to start in poetry reading and it also helps to weed out a lot of the dross, and IMHO, there is an awful lot of that amongst poetry.

[Katrina Sark · Rating 1 out of 5]

Out of the selected 270 poems, only 21 are by women.
This inherent inequality is also reflected in the choice of the poems, most of which pertain to male issues.
It's no longer cool to universalize the male experience to that extent!

[Mugren Ohaly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nothing but long and dull poems