Seamus Heaney

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Seamus Heaney

• By
• Megan Miller
• and
• Kimberly Berlinghoff

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• " If you have a strong first world and a strong
  set of relationships then in some part of you you
  are always free, you can walk the world because
  you know where you belong, you have some place to
  come back to."
• Seamus Heaney at Magherafelt Civic Reception
  January 1996

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Seamus Heaney/?e?m?s hi?ni/

• Born April 13, 1939
• In Bellaghy, Northern Ireland
• Poet
• Writing period 1966-present
• Notable awards
• Nobel Prize in Literature
• Golden Wreath of Struga Poetry Evenings 2001
• Married Marie Devlin 1965
• Taught at
• Queens University
• Carysfort College
• University of Oxford
• Harvard University

http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Heaney
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Influences

• Geoffrey Chaucer, Lord Byron, T. S. Eliot, Robert
  Frost, John Keats, William Shakespeare, William
  Woodsworth, William Butler Yeats, Ted Hughes, and
  Patrick Kavanagh.

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Background

• His mothers family worked in the Linen
  factories.
• His fathers family were farmers.
• He is Irish Catholic, and grew up in Northern
  Ireland.
• He translated poetry from Gaelic.
• His pen-name when he first started writing poetry
  was Incertus.

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Digging

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vdIzJgbNANzk
• Heaney references the hiding places from
  William Wordsworths The Prelude when discussing
  some of his work in particular, Digging.

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the hiding places

• The hiding places of my power
• Seem open I approach, and then they close
• I see by glimpses now when age comes on,
• May scarcely see at all, and I would give,
• A substance and a life to what I feel
• I would enshrine the spirit of the past
• For future restoration.
• William Wordsworth

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From Seamus Heaney's Feeling into Words

• Poetry as
• Divination
• Revelation of the self to the self
• Restoration of culture to itself
• Elements of continuity, with the aura of
• authenticity of archeological finds
• wherein the buried shard has as much
• importance as the buried city itself.
• A dig coming up with plants

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Analogies

• Pen/Spade
• Heaney explains it pertains to when as a child
  walking to school people would stop and ask what
  grade he was in and how had he been punished that
  day ending with the advice to keep studying
  because learnings easy carried and the pens
  lighter than the spade.
• Idea of uncovering and touching the hidden thing

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Metaphor

• Digging Sexual metaphor or act of initiation
• In reference to childish song
• Are your praties dry
• and are they fit for digging?
• Put in your spade and try,
• Says Dirty-Faced McGuidan.
  
• For Heaney this poem act of initiation and upon
  feeling the excitement and release desired to
  repeat the experience.

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Allusions

• References to generations and the cyclic nature
  of farming
• My father, digging. I look down (5)
• By God, the old man could handle a spade. /
• Just like his old man. (15-16)
• Here are just three generations grandfather,
  father and son

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• Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
  /Bends low, comes up twenty years away /Stooping
  in rhythm through potato drills/Where he was
  digging (6-9)
• Here is an allusion to the continuous work and
• connection past/present/future that farmers put
• into and have with the earth.

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• Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods/Over his
  shoulder, going down and down/ For the good turf.
  Digging. (22-24)
• Allusion to unearthing truths
• Through living roots awaken in my head. (27)
• Ideas and memories that are hidden or buried
  there
• But Ive no spade to follow men like them. (28)
• He has studied and found the pen is lighter than
  the spade.

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• Between my finger and my thumb/ The squat pen
  rests./Ill dig with it. (29-31)
• Heaney will use the abilities he has, and with
  his pen will find the words to rediscover his
  culture

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References

• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Heaney
• http//nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laur
  eates/1995/heaney-bio.html
• http//www.seamusheaney.org/seamus_heaney_biograph
  y.html
• Ramazani, Jahan, Ellmann, Richard, OClair,
  Robert. The Norton Anthology of Modern and
  Contemporary Poetry Vol. 2. W.W. Norton
  Company. New York New York. 2003.