Digging, by Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney was long known as "Famous Seamus" in his homeland.
The Irish writer, who won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, had been writing beautiful poetry for decades (before he died in 2013).
One of his earliest poems - from the 1960s - compares the work he does with that of his father and grandfather. All three men use their hands, to earn a living, but the youngest of the three is a different kind of digger.
Think about these issues as Carole Bos (creator of Awesome Stories) reads the poem.
ISSUES AND QUESTIONS TO PONDER: Seamus Heaney - the writer of this poem - admires the way his father and grandfather used a spade to dig in the earth. The poet says that he digs, too - with a pen instead of a spade.
What is he digging?
Heaney did not follow the same path as his father and grandfather. Do you think his father approved of his son's career choice?
Does the poem give us any clues about that?
Digging
By Seamus Heaney
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; 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 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, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, 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.
To hear Seamus Heaney read his poem, "Digging," follow this link to YouTube.
For Classics at Awesome Stories
Media Credits
"Digging," by Seamus Heaney, from Death of a Naturalist (1969). Copyright, Seamus Heaney, all rights reserved. Provided here, as fair use for educational purposes, and read by Carole Bos (creator of Awesome Stories).
