Discuss some of the ways in which Seamus Heaney makes use of the past

Discuss some of the ways in which Seamus Heaney makes use of the past

in his poetry

Seamus Heaney was born on 13th April 1939 on a farm called Mossbawn in

Northern Ireland. He was the eldest of nine children, and was brought

up as a Roman Catholic, which later, proved to be a popular topic in

his poetry. Heaney’s childhood was full of deaths from relatives and

friends which give him a certain amount of understanding about death

and corpses, a poem that shows this is ‘The Tollund Man’. In his

poetry, Seamus Heaney usually starts in the past tense, imagining that

he is still in his childhood, and then suddenly, towards the end of

the poem, turns to the present tense, and reflects how his childhood

memories have affected him as an adult.

‘Digging’ is a perfect example of Heaney returning to his origins.

Heaney evokes the rural landscape where he was raised and shows the

care and skill of how his Father and ancestors farmed the land ‘My

father, digging’. In the poem there are many monosyllabic words such

as ‘bog’, ‘sods’ and ‘curt cuts’, which is also alliteration and

assonance. The colloquial term, ‘By God, the old man could handle a

spade’ shows Seamus Heaney’s pride of his Grandfather. “Irishmen are

justifiably well known for digging, but Heaney shows the skill and

dignity in their labour”. By giving examples of his Father digging

for food ‘potato drills’ and his Grandfather digging for fuel ‘cut

more turf’ indicates how it is traditional in his family to dig as a

profession, and how Heaney broke that tradition. ‘The squat pen

rests. I’ll dig with it’, shows metaphorically that Heaney will ‘dig’

for words in his poetry, rather than for turf or potatoes.

Onomatopoeia is used often throughout the poem...

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on the inside he would understand why they had to do it.

On the whole, Seamus Heaney uses the past and his childhood in many of

his poems to be able to see them in a different light and be able to

understand different memories with maturity. Heaney uses a variety of

different ways to include past in his poems, like the bog people, the

conflicts in Northern Ireland and in his childhood, to attempt to

understand present day sectarian conflict and to explore human

cruelty.

References:

* A Student’s Guide to Seamus Heaney by Neil Corcoran

* Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet by Michael Parker

* www.teachit.co.uk

* www.galegroup.com/free_resources/poets/bio/heaney_s.htm-69k

* www.universalteacher,org.uk/anthology/seamusheaney.htm#naturalist

* www.usna.edu/EnglishDept/ilu/heaney.htm

* http://ctct.essoetment.com/whoisseamuse-rgkk.htm