DIGGING

SEAMUS HEANEY
 Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)
• Seamus Heaney is one of the major poets of the 20th century.
• A native of Northern Ireland and later moved to Dublin.
• He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 "for works
of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday
miracles and the living past."   
• Part of Heaney's popularity stems from his subject matter
—modern Northern Ireland, its farms and cities beset
with civil strife, its natural culture and language overrun
by English rule.
• Often described as a regional poet, he is also a traditionalist who
deliberately gestures back towards the “pre-modern”
worlds of William Wordsworth.
Digging
enjambment

Between my finger and my thumb   

simile

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

powerful
comfortable

Short and wide

Personification
Digging
Onomatopoeia harsh-sounding and unpleasant

Under my window, a clean rasping sound    enjambment

alliteration
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

Digging
A person’s buttocks

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

In the past
Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging. routine

Digging
rough settle or lie comfortably
shaft

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

lug
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked, The father and son’s spadework

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

The rural landscape

Suggest the physical aspect of

labour
 Digging
Pride in their ability and skill in manual labour The tool

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Tracing the family
Just like his old man. tradition
Digging further into history

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

His grandfather is a legend

Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Impressed and admiring

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods Great work ethic

Over his shoulder, going down and down

Repetition of ‘’down’’ to
For the good turf. Digging. mimic repetitive nature of
the job
 make a soft sucking
Digging sound such as that
made by treading
heavily through mud
Onomatopoeic Sounds

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Poetic purpose

Through living roots awaken in my head.

Roots: Pun 1) part of a plant in the
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them. ground, 2) family or ethnic origins

Confession: he cannot
follow in their
footsteps because he
doesn’t have the same
tool (spade)
Digging
Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

He has his own tool

for digging
Analysis
Speaker: Poet himself

Subject: An autobiographical poem about family tradition and professions in the form of a
comparison between the poet and his grandfathers.

Themes: Roots, Identity, and Skill

Contrast: The Physical aspect of labour against the mental or intellectual

His father and grandfather digging vs. his writing

Enjambment: helps the flow of memory to the past when the speaker was a child and watched his
father and grandfather digging.