Sweeney Astray

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title: "Sweeney Astray" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1983-poetry-books", "20th-century-irish-literature", "1983-poems", "irish-poems", "works-by-seamus-heaney"] description: "Seamus Heaney translation of Buile Shuibhne" topic_path: "arts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweeney_Astray" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Seamus Heaney translation of Buile Shuibhne ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox book"]

Field	Value
name	Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish
image	File:SweeneyAstray.jpg
caption	First edition
author	Seamus Heaney
country	Ireland
language	English
publisher	Field Day Publications, Derry/Dublin
pub_date	1983-11-01
pages	85
isbn	0-946755-03-5
dewey	821/.914 19
congress	PR6058.E2 S9 1984b
oclc	11339072
::

| name = Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish | title_orig = | translator = | image = File:SweeneyAstray.jpg | caption = First edition | author = Seamus Heaney | illustrator = | cover_artist = | country = Ireland | language = English | series = | subject = | genre = | publisher = Field Day Publications, Derry/Dublin | pub_date = 1983-11-01 | english_pub_date = | media_type = | pages = 85 | isbn = 0-946755-03-5 | dewey = 821/.914 19 | congress = PR6058.E2 S9 1984b | oclc = 11339072 | preceded_by = | followed_by = Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish is a version of the Irish poem Buile Shuibhne written by Seamus Heaney, based on an earlier edition and translation by J. G. O'Keeffe. The work was first published in 1983 and won the 1985 PEN Translation Prize for poetry.

Photographer Rachel Giese and Heaney later collaborated to juxtapose selected passages of Heaney's translation with Giese's photographs of sites mentioned in the text, a work published as Sweeney's Flight.

Editions

• Seamus Heaney, Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish (Derry: Field Day Publications, 1983),
• Seamus Heaney, Sweeney Astray (London: Faber, 1984),
• Seamus Heaney and Rachael Giese, Sweeney's Flight: Based on the Revised Text of 'Sweeney Astray', with the Complete Revised Text of 'Sweeney Astray' (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1992); pp. 85–117 print the complete text, with revisions
• Seamus Heaney, Sweeney Astray (London: Faber and Faber, 2001) ; prints the revised text first published in Sweeney's Flight

Anthologisations

Selections from Sweeney Astray appear in:

• Seamus Heaney, New Selected Poems 1966–1987 (London: Faber and Faber, 1990),
• Seamus Heaney, Opened Ground: Poems 1966–1996 (London: Faber and Faber, 1998),

References

References

1. Saunders, Emma. (2010). "Field Day Papers". National Library of Ireland.
2. (December 1985). "Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish by Seamus Heaney; Station Island by Seamus Heaney; Hailstones by Seamus Heaney". The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies.
3. (Fall–Winter 2009). "Sweeney Astray: The Other in Oneself". Éire-Ireland.
4. O'Keeffe, James G.. (1913). "Buile Shuibhne (The Frenzy of Suibhne). Being the Adventures of Suibhne Geilt. A Middle-Irish Romance". D. Nutt.
5. (2020-06-10). "PEN Translation Prize".
6. (2008). "Seamus Heaney and Medieval Poetry". DS Brewer.
7. (2011). "Contemporary Irish Poetry and the Pastoral Tradition". University of Missouri.

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