Finders Keepers is a collection of Seamus Heaney's essays spanning three decades. Whether autobiographical, thematic, or literary, these essays and lectures encompass the central questions that concern him: How should a poet live and write? What is his relationship with his own voice, his place, his literary heritage, and the modern world? In addition to selections from the poet's three previous essay collections (Preoccupations, The Government of the Tongue, and The Redress of Poetry), this volume includes material from the lecture series 'The Place of Writing,' delivered at Emory University in 1988. It also contains a rich variety of pieces not previously collected in a volume, ranging from small newspaper articles to more extensive lectures and contributions to books. In its references to a wide range of poets - Irish and British, American and Eastern European, predecessors and contemporaries - Finders Keepers is, as its title suggests, 'a declaration of both excitement and possession.'