Heaney's Childhood Memories in Poems Mid-Term Break and Follower

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Heaney's Childhood Memories in Poems Mid-Term Break and Follower Seamus Heaney is an established Irish poet who was born on April 13th 1939. He was the oldest of nine children and was brought up on a remote farm in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. He has a lot of typically Irish memories which he includes in his poems. The three main memories that he brings up in the two poems 'Mid-Term Break and 'Follower' are the death of his brother Christopher, farm life and breaking the family tradition. At 18, Heaney left his small village to pursue his English career, unaware of just how talented a poet he was. It wasn't until he attended Queens College to study a degree in English and got involved with a group of poets, known as 'the Group'. He graduated in 1961 and then went on to earn his teachers certificate at St. Josephs College in Belfast. His first poems that were published was in 1965. They were a short collection of eleven poems, conveniently called 'Eleven Poems'. Since then, Heaney has published over 14 anthologies which have won many prizes and awards. Seamus Heaney writes about his childhood memories in a number of poems. However, the two poems I have chosen to analyse are 'Mid-Term Break' and 'Follower'. The first poem I have chosen to analyse is Mid-Term Break. This is about Heaneys memory of losing his brother, Christopher by a car accident. Before reading the poem, the title 'Mid-Term Break' would suggest the feeling of happiness, and creates the idea of relaxation and calmness. As you begin to read the poem, you realise that Heaney was being bitterly ironic. The poem itself is about Heaney losing a loved ... ... middle of paper ... ...jambement to help both poems flow. The poems also have many differences. For example, 'Mid-Term Break' uses the iambic pentameter and 'Follower' uses the iambic tetrameter. The settings are also different, as well as the rhyming scheme and the nautical references that only appear in 'Follower'. To conclude, I have found that 'Mid-Term Break' and 'Follower' reflect Heaneys childhood extremely well, as they describe what Heaneys life was like as a child on an Irish farm, and how him and his family reacted when his brother died. 'Follower' also describes how hard it was for Heaney to break the family tradition of farming to pursue his career in English. Even though I enjoyed reading both poems, I preferred 'Mid-Term Break' due to the tense mood Heaney was able to create and the shock of the one line stanza at the end.

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