Human Chain, By Seamus Heaney

Fans of Seamus Heaney will find plenty to admire in this, his 12th collection of poetry. There are the usual precise observations of the natural world: "The glum grey pocks/ White dandelion milk/ Would mark your skin with as it dried." The childhood memories, present and active in the man: "Ghost-footing what was then the terra firma/ Of hallway linoleum, grandfather now appears..."

Perhaps the best poem is "A Herbal", a homage to Guillevic's "Herbier de Bretagne", in which Heaney meditates on the varieties of plants growing in graveyards – grasses, nettles, bracken, broom, blackberries – and their significances. "If you know a bit/ About the universe/ It's because you've taken it in/ Like that/ Looked as hard/ As you look into yourself/ Into the rat hole/ Through the vetch and dock that mantled it."

There is the lightly worn erudition: "Route 110" maps the arc of a life on to the underworld section of Virgil's Aeneid; "Hermit Songs" revisits the heroes of Gaelic legend. There are the tender, reverent memories of family: "Album" is a meditation on old photos of his parents, seeing them anew through an adult's eye. The poetic voice is quiet and contemplative – perhaps a bit lacking in fireworks. But that is what admirers of Heaney love.