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A Selection of Poems
by Seamus Heaney
Digging
Death of a Naturalist
Mid-Term Break
Blackberry-Picking
Follower
Personal Helicon
Storm on the Island
Perch
At a Potato Digging
(Part 1-IV)
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Digging
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.
Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
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Digging
1. After reading the poem carefully, write down a summary of what tales place in
the space below.
Lines 1-2
Lines 3-14
Lines 15-27
Lines 28-31
2. Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet and in many of his poems, he writes directly or
indirectly about the political situation in Northern Ireland.
Can you find any lines in the poem that might relate to this in some way?
Explain your answer.
3. When Seamus Heaney thinks back to his father and grandfather digging, he
feels proud of them, as both were highly skilled.
Underline / highlight all of the words / phrases in the poem that help us to
understand just how skilful Heaney’s father and grandfather were.
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4. Heaney was expected to follow in the family tradition, becoming a skilled
labourer. He realised that he was not cut out to follow in their footsteps.
What do you think would have been his thoughts and feelings about this?
5. When writing about the poem, it is essential that you develop your points in
detail. Add further information to each point below:
The words ‘clean’, ‘rhythm’ and ‘nestled’ are used to help the reader understand that...
There is a development at line fifteen and the structure indicates this by...
The final stanza of the poem changes the first line and the significance of this is...
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Death of a Naturalist
All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimbleSwimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.
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Death of a Naturalist
1. The structure of this poem clearly indicates that it is in two parts. In the
space below, summarise the two stanzas:
Stanza One:
Stanza Two:
2. During the first stanza, we are introduced to the character of the young
Seamus Heaney and also the flax-dam that he used to visit.
What is our first impression of the character of the young boy?
3. What is our first impression about what kind of setting the flax-dam is?
4. What do you notice about the teacher’s words to the narrator about the
frogs?
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5. Explain how the attitude of the narrator has changed in the second stanza
of the poem, when compared to the first.
6. Can you find any examples of onomatopoeia in the second half of the poem?
What are they and why do you think that they have been used?
7. The title that a poet chooses to give their poem is always important. What
would you consider to be the significance of the title of this poem?
8. This is a reflective poem, in which the poet looks back to an event from his
past. Apart from the general lesson about frogs, what is the more general point
about the experience of growing up.
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Mid-Term Break
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying-He had always taken funerals in his stride-And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four foot box, a foot for every year.
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Mid-Term Break
1. This poem presents a series of images to the reader, of what the narrator
experienced as a child, after the death of his younger brother. On the reverse
of this sheet, sketch six of the key images, writing the corresponding quotation
from the poem underneath each.
2. During the poem, what we do we learn about the personalities of the narrator’s
mother and father?
3. After the death of his brother, the narrator experiences several different
emotions. Write the quotation that would suggest each in the table below.
EMOTION
EVIDENCE
Embarrassed / Uneasy
Confused / Frustrated
4. The subject matter of this poem is very personal and emotional. How do you
feel as a reader, when you share in the thoughts of the narrator?
5. Whilst the content is emotional, the style is very matter of fact for much of
the poem. How effective do you think that this is? Consider the final stanza.
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Seamus Heaney – Poem Summary Frame
Mid-Term Break
Death of a Naturalist
Digging
What is the poem about?
What is the message of the
poem?
How is language / imagery
used in the poem?
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Blackberry-Picking
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
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Blackberry-Picking
Stanza Two
Stanza One
1. In this poem, Seamus Heaney recalls going blackberry-picking as a child. There
are two distinct sections / stanzas to the poem and you should explain what
happens in each of these, focusing on the emotions experienced by the narrator.
2. The poem is full of colour and many of the colours are used to describe the
blackberries themselves. Pick three quotations about the blackberries, copy them
out and then explain what impression of the berries we are given.
1.
2.
3.
3. Who was Bluebeard and what does the image of the children’s palms being like his
suggest about their attitude to the blackberries?
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4. There is a ‘musical quality’ to the poem that comes through the use of rhyme and
the inclusion of alliteration and assonance. Find and copy an example of each of
these features and then try to outline the impact of the use of these features.
1.
2.
3.
5. Explain how Heaney communicates to the reader of the poem his sense of
disappointment at what ultimately happens to the blackberries that have been
picked.
6. One of the reasons for the poem’s success is the way in which it vividly creates a
sense of the scene through the use of the senses. Record examples of each of
the five senses that are used:
Sight
Sound
Smell
Taste
Touch
7. As well as writing about a personal memory, a comment is being made about life
itself. What do you think is the message / sub-text of the poem?
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Follower
My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horse strained at his clicking tongue.
An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck
Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.
I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.
I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.
I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.
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Follower
1. The relationship between the narrator and his father is central to this poem and
most of the poem is made up of Heaney’s memory of following his father with a
plough.
Consider what this poem tells us about the relationship between the two and how
it indicates the relative skill of the two men.
How does the poem indicate the narrator’s admiration for his father?
How does the language used in the poem indicate the skill of the father?
2. Whilst the poem is recalling a memory from the poet’s childhood, it gains a lot of
its strength from the vivid way in which the scene is recreated.
Identify three features that help to recreate the scene, such as the use of
adjectives, the use of images, etc.



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3. The poem ‘Digging’ also deals with the relationship between a father and child.
Think carefully about this poem with ‘Follower’ and explain one similarity and one
difference between the way in which they present this relationship.
SIMILARITY
DIFFERENCE
4. Look carefully at the penultimate stanza of the poem and then explain what the
ambition of the poet was as a child.
5. The final stanza of the poem marks a change in tone. What do you notice about
the contrast between the start and the end of the poem?
6. The poem is called ‘Follower’ and the idea of following is crucial. What do you
think Heaney means when he talks about the father that, ‘keeps stumbling’ and
‘will not go away’?
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Personal Helicon
As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.
A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.
Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.
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.
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Personal Helicon
Putting general poetry questions to the test; use these questions to help you understand
and analyse the last poem. Don’t forget to use lines from the poem to support your answers.
1. Who is the speaker?
2. Who is the speaker's audience? Does the audience help to define the speaker?
3. What is the poem's literal meaning?
4. What is the poem's theme/message?
5. What is the poem's structure? How does it match the poem’s message?
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6. What is the poem's meter? How does it contribute to the development of the
poem's subject or theme? Are there any strategic points where the poem breaks
with its rhyme scheme? Why?
7. What imagery is developed in the poem? Does Heaney use metaphor, simile,
personification, etc? Does he use symbolism? Considering the poem's subject
matter, are these images obvious ones, or are they unusual and unexpected?
Do they contribute to the poem's subject or theme? If so, how?
8. Is there any evidence of repetition, alliteration, onomatopoeia, or other sound
effects in the poem? What do they contribute?
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Seamus Heaney – Poem Summary Frame
Personal Helicon
Follower
Blackberry- Picking
What is the poem about?
What is the message of the
poem?
How is language / imagery
used in the poem?
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Seamus Heaney – Descriptive Writing
One of the reasons why poems such as ‘Digging’, ‘Death of a
Naturalist’ and ‘Mid-Term Break’ are so effective, is the quality of
Heaney’s descriptions of the settings and scenes that are
featured in them. Whether it be the setting of the flax-dam or
the memory of his father digging, the descriptions are vivid and
come to life.
Look back at the poems we have studied and write down four things about the
description, that makes it so effective:
1.
2.
3.
4.
As well as the lessons that we can learn from Heaney’s poems, can you think of anything
else that would make for an effective piece of descriptive writing? Try to list four
more things in the space below:
5.
6.
7.
8.
Task Outline
Your task is to produce a short piece of descriptive writing about a location that you
remember from your own childhood.
In doing this, you should consider the following:


How you can use the descriptive techniques outlined above effectively, in order to
help the reader recreate the setting in their mind?
What it is that makes you remember this setting and why it is important?
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Storm on the Island
We are prepared: we build our houses squat,
Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate.
The wizened earth had never troubled us
With hay, so as you can see, there are no stacks
Or stooks that can be lost. Nor are there trees
Which might prove company when it blows full
Blast: you know what I mean - leaves and branches
Can raise a chorus in a gale
So that you can listen to the thing you fear
Forgetting that it pummels your house too.
But there are no trees, no natural shelter.
You might think that the sea is company,
Exploding comfortably down on the cliffs
But no: when it begins, the flung spray hits
The very windows, spits like a tame cat
Turned savage. We just sit tight while wind dives
And strafes invisibly. Space is a salvo.
We are bombarded by the empty air.
Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.
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Seamus Heaney – Storm on the Island
1. During the poem there is a clear movement from the narrator feeling safe to
feeling insecure and the turning point is the word ‘But’ that starts line 11.
INSECURE
SAFE
Explain what it is that makes the narrator feel safe in the first part of the
poem and insecure in the second.
2. The first and last lines of any poem are important. Explain the way in which the
tone has changed from the start to the end of the poem in the space below.
3. The use of language in the poem is extremely important. Read back over the
poem carefully and highlight the ten words that best serve to create a sense of
drama.
A number of the words create a link between the storm and warfare –
‘Exploding’, ‘strafes’, ‘salvo’ and ‘bombarded’. Explain why Heaney chose to
include these words in the poem and what they tell us about what is taking place.
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4. Whilst there is a clear two-part structure to the poem, Heaney has written the
whole poem in one stanza.
Why do you think that Heaney chose to do this and what does it indicate about
the nature of the storm?
5. The narrative perspective of the poem is interesting. Explain how we are
encouraged to associate with what is happening on the island and to understand
the drama of what is taking place.
6. NB: The first eight letters of the title make the word ‘STORMONT’ and this is
the name of the residence of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and
is therefore a location closely associated with the ‘Troubles’. This indicates the
fact that the poem is a metaphorical one – it is about the need for all of us to
have strong foundations so that we can withstand whatever ‘storms’ come along
to test us in our lives.
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Perch
Perch on their water-perch hung in the clear Bann River
Near the clay bank in alder-dapple and waver,
Perch we called 'grunts', little flood-slubs, runty and ready,
I saw and I see in the river's glorified body
That is passable through, but they're bluntly holding the pass,
Under the water-roof, over the bottom, adoze,
Guzzling the current, against it, all muscle and slur
In the finland of perch, the fenland of alder, on air
That is water, on carpets of Bann stream, on hold
In the everything flows and steady go of the world.
Answer these questions to check your comprehension of the poem:
1.
What words help make the perch seem special or unusual?
2. What other words does Heaney use to describe the Perch?
3. Find one example of alliteration in the poem and explain its effect.
4. Find an example of onomatopoeia in the poem. What effect does this have?
5. Why has Heaney chosen to split the poem up into 5 2-line stanzas?
6. What words give the water a special quality?
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AT A POTATO DIGGING
I
A mechanical digger wrecks the drill,
Spins up shower of roots and mould.
Labourers swarm in behind, stoop to fill
Wicker creels. Fingers go dead in the cold.
Like crows attacking crow-black fields, they stretch
A higgledy line from hedge to headland;
Some pairs keep breaking ragged ranks to fetch
A full creel to the pit and straighten, stand
Tall for a moment but soon stumble back
To fish a new load from the crumbled surf.
Heads bow, trunks bend, hands fumble towards the black
Mother. Processional stooping through the turf
Recurs mindlessly as autumn. Centuries
Of fear and homage to the famine god
Toughen the muscles behind their humbled knees,
Make a seasonal alter of the sod.
Part I
The opening stanza focuses on the picture of a mechanical digger, a farming vehicle, digging up
the potatoes and labourers following behind, filling ‘wicker creels’ (baskets) with the potatoes
that have been unearthed.
Fingers are described as getting very cold, so cold they ‘go dead’.
A simile is used at the start of stanza two to describe the workers ‘like crows attacking crowblack fields’, the image of birds likens the workers to the common sight of birds following a
plough around a field at harvest time to pick out all the grubs that have been unearthed. Here
it is the people, probably wearing black, picking up the potatoes.
The operation is compared to fishing in stanza three.
The earth is personified as ‘mother’ giving it a caring, loving quality.
There is also a religious feel to the image ‘processional stooping through the turf recurs
mindlessly as autumn’ there is no thought given to the process, it is merely a natural and
habitual event, like autumn following summer.
The fear of a ‘famine god’ means that they kneel in reverence to the ‘altar of the sod’. They
worship the ground and the potatoes that come from it as without it they would starve, just as
people worship god to help them through difficult times.
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II
Flint-white, purple. They lie scattered
like inflated pebbles. Native
to the black clutch of clay
where the halved seed shot and clotted
these knobbed and slit-eyed tubers seem
the petrified hearts of drills. Split
by the spade, they show white as cream.
Good smells exude from crumbled earth.
The rough bark of humus erupts
knots of potatoes ( a clean birth )
whose solid feel, whose wet inside
promises taste of ground and root.
To be piled in pits; live skulls, blind-eyed.
This section describes the potatoes once they have been dug up. ‘they lie scattered like
inflated pebbles’ describes using a simile the image of large, pebble shaped objects, hard and
cool to the touch and of a similar colour.
‘seed shot’ uses alliteration to imply the sound of the potato being cut in half. The alliteration
‘split by the spade’ again uses the ‘s’ sound to show the harsh cutting of the potatoes, those
that have opened up show their insides ‘white as cream’ (simile) which makes the insides sound
good and pleasing as cream is something used as a treat on desserts.
The good smells and the feel of the ‘humus’ (ground) are further described and the earth’s
mother like qualities are developed further with the idea that the potatoes dug up is like ‘a
clean birth’, so personification is developed further here.
The potato is good and healthy, promising ‘taste of ground and root’, so reminding those who
eat it of where it has come from. There is a less pleasant final image of the earth at the end
of this section ‘to be piled in pits; live skulls, blind eyed’ which gives the idea using metaphors
of the potatoes being unpleasant, like skulls buried in the ground, but still alive, there is
something sinister about this image, which perhaps links in to the next section, which looks at
the potato famine of 1845.
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III
Live skulls, blind-eyed, balanced on
wild higgledy skeletons
scoured the land in 'forty-five
wolfed the blighted root and died.
The new potato, sound as stone,
putrefied when it had lain
three days in the long clay pit.
Millions rotted along with it.
Mouths tightened in, eyes died hard,
faces chilled to plucked bird.
In a million wicker huts
beaks of famine snipped at guts.
A people hungering from birth,
grubbing, like plants, in the bitch earth,
were grafted with a great sorrow.
Hope rotted like a marrow.
Stinking potatoes fouled the land
pits turned pus into filthy mounds:
and where potato diggers are
you still smell the running sore.
There is repetition of ‘live skulls, blind eyed’ at the start of this section to link back to the
second, but the link is now that these are ‘balanced on wild higgledy skeletons’, real people who
lived in 1845, when a huge potato famine hit Ireland, killing a vast number of people.
The skeletons almost seem unreal, not human, as they have all the life taken from them as they
‘scoured the land’ looking for food, eating the ‘blighted’ (diseased) potatoes and dying, as a
result of this.
The ‘new potato’ is described as if it seems fine, ‘sound as a stone’ but underneath this it is
‘putrefied’ (rotting). ‘millions rotted with it’ could be a reference to other potatoes or the
people who died, lying in the pit of the earth, ironically where the diseased potatoes came from
originally.
The people are described in stanza three as desperate and lifeless ‘eyes died hard’, showing a
lifelessness in people’s eyes and ‘faces chilled to a plucked bird’ using a metaphor to make
human faces seem pale and withered, as a bird looks when plucked of all its feathers.
There is a further metaphor ‘beaks of famine snipped at guts’ continuing the bird image, where
the hunger pains are so bad in people’s stomachs that they feel like a bird pecking away
there. The next stanza makes the earth personified, but this time as a ‘bitch’ not a mother,
thus making her seem evil and unpleasant.
The people seem like birds ‘grubbing’ at the earth for food, which they cannot find. The idea in
the simile ‘hope rotted like a marrow’ shows how the people lost all hope of survival, as the land
and all it contained rotted away.
The final stanza adds further to the idea of decay with ‘stinking potatoes fouled the lands’ and
the unpleasant alliteration ‘pits turned pus into filthy mounds’ with the ‘p’ sound sounding angry
and disgusting, like the decay.
The idea of disease and wounds is continued with ‘you still smell the running sore’ making the
earth like a person who is injured and the wound is rotted and decayed.
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IV
Under a gay flotilla of gulls
The rhythm deadens, the workers stop.
Brown bread and tea in bright canfuls
Are served for lunch. Dead-beat, they flop.
Down in the ditch and take their fill,
Thankfully breaking timeless fasts;
Then, stretched on the faithless ground, spill
Libations of cold tea, scatter crusts.
Part IV
The final section brings us back to the present day. Heaney observes the people stop work for
lunch. They are exhausted from their hard work and eat happily ‘thankfully breaking their
timeless fasts’ as if they are eating after a period of fasting (something Catholics do during
Lent, building up to Easter).
This idea of religion is linked with ‘faithless ground’ where they stretch out, scattering crumbs
after their lunch.
There is some indication that religion may have had some influence on the famine of 1845, so
much so that the people starved, but this is only hinted at.
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Seamus Heaney – Poem Summary Frame
At a Potato Digging (I-V)
Perch
Storm on the Island
What is the poem about?
What is the message of the
poem?
How is language / imagery
used in the poem?
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