Death of a Naturalist

On its original appearance in 1966, Death of a Naturalist won the Cholmondeley Award, a Gregory Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. 'His words give us the soil-reek of Ireland, the colourful violence of his childhood on a farm in Derry. The full-blooded energy of these poems makes Death of a Naturalist the best first book of poems I've read for some time.' - C.B. Cox in the Spectator 'The power and precision of his best poems are a delight, and as a first collection Death of a Naturalist is outstanding [...] His subject is those things which are inherent or inherited. What he praises is to be praised in his own work.' - Christopher Ricks, New Statesman 'His childhood landscape has acquired the validity of myth.' Michael Longley, Irish Times Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime, To stare big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.