Haunted Heaney: Spectres and the Poetry looks at the ghosts and spectres present within the poetry of the Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney. Covering Heaneys work from his first collection, Death of a Naturalist, to his final collection, Human Chain, this volume analyses Heaneys poetry through the lens of hauntology as presented by Jacques Derrida in Specters of Marx. This book presents spectres and ghosts not in the conventional sense, as purely supernatural, physical manifestations haunting a place, but instead as having a non-physical presence. In this sense past cultures, societies, texts, poets, and memories are examined as having a spectral influence on Heaneys writing. His work is indebted to hauntedness as the past in all its forms sutures itself within the present of his thinking and writing, and our reading of the poetry. Topics for discussion include the Norse spectres in the early poetry; British colonialism and its haunting influence on the poet; a renewed look at the bog poems as being influenced by the spectral; the classical influence of Virgil and Dante; and a reading of Route 110 that incorporates the major instances of Heaneys career into a singular poem. The book also incorporates Heaneys prose work and interviews into the discussion and uses these works as a metacommentary to the poetry offering a deeper insight into the mind of one of Irelands greatest writers.