Seamus Heaney Poems Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney’s “Casualty” is written as an elegy for a friend who was killed in a bombing in Northern Ireland shortly after Bloody Sunday. His friend, who was a Catholic, failed to obey a curfew set in place by the Irish Republican Army. He was...

“Requiem for the Croppies”, written by Seamus Heaney in 1962, describes the Irish Rebellion of 1798 as seen through the eyes and narrative voice of one random, deceased Irish soldier. The term “croppies” refers to the rebels, attributable to their...

Seamus Heaney’s poem “Digging,” an eight-stanza poem written in free verse, is the first in his collection of poems entitled Death of a Naturalist, which was published in 1966. Written in first-person narrative, this circularly structured poem...

Seamus Heaney and Sylvia Plath are two contemporary poets from very different family backgrounds. Heaney grew up rooted in rural Ireland with a close-knit large family, and Plath grew up in a dislocated family with her mother and brother. Her...

Two of Seamus Heaney's poems that rely on the shifts in language to create meaning are “The Strand at Lough Beg” and “Casualty”, both from his Field Work (1979) Anthology. Both poems revolve around the effects of sectarian violence in Ireland...

The poem “Punishment” by Seamus Heaney was written in 1975 as a part of the anthology North. It is a part of Heaney’s bog series, in which he describes the Irish bogland, and the different artifacts and remains that have been found within the...

Seamus Heaney paints a picture of Ireland through his poems, at times describing its culture and at other times its politics. In poems like 'Digging' and 'The Follower' he ascribes a sense of dignity to the act of farming, comparing it to the art...

Seamus Heaney wrote poems on a wide variety of subjects; from reflecting on his experiences with nature as a child to a period of political turmoil that plagued Ireland in the early 20th century called the “Troubles.” Some of his poems address...

Both ‘Before you were mine’ by Carol Anne Duffy and ‘Follower’ by Seamus Heaney present the theme of admiration through their poems. As they both capture the parent-child relationship through the child’s perspective showcasing how they each viewed...

Seamus Heaney’s ‘Mid Term Break’ and ‘In Memoriam Francis Ledwidge’ lament needless violence, as well as the one-dimensional and euphemistic way with which general society deals with the loss of innocent, pure lives, whether it be a personal...

The universal image of childhood that is ‘rang[ing]’ frogspawn on ‘window-sills’, ‘wait[ing] and watch[ing]’, with a fervent curiosity and admiration, until the ‘fattening dots’ dynamically metamorphose into ‘nimble swimming tadpoles’ is one, very...

‘Funeral Rites’ examines the role of rituals and ‘customary rhythms’ in the ‘arbitration of the feud’ in an Ireland plagued by the incongruous notion of ‘neighbourly murder’. However, in preference to the sterility of ‘tainted rooms’ in which the...

In ‘Requiem for the Croppies’, Heaney presents the reader with a stark image; the ‘broken wave’ that ‘soak[s]’ the ‘hillside’. The ‘broken wave’ evokes a sense of an anti-climax, as a wave may gather momentum, reach its peak, and eventually roll...

‘The Tollund Man’, as is his ‘sad freedom’, seems tellingly paradoxical in death – ‘naked’ and exposed, yet somehow venerated as a ‘trove’ and a ‘bridegroom to the goddess’. He is destroyed, but elevated as a sacred symbol of serenity after this...

In his critically acclaimed collection North, contemporary Irish poet Seamus Heaney reveals a very personal side of himself and of his identity as a writer. Although each individual poem explores its own storyline and employs its own metaphors,...

One of the most universally acknowledged beliefs states that there is no bond as strong, forgiving, and irreplaceable as a mother’s love for her child. On the contrary, poet Seamus Heaney challenges this conviction throughout his poem “Bye-Child”...

“A Call” Commentary“A Call,” by Seamus Heaney, traces the growing import of death, and therefore appreciation of life, on the speaker. By making a simple call to his father, he is thrown into a series of reflections on his father, as well as time,...

“Mid-Term Break,” by Seamus Heaney, traces the emotional progression of a teenage boy after finding out that his little brother has died in a horrific accident. The harsh realities of life force him into a despondent blur, and he is not able to...

The undertaking of a transition from one phase of life to another can prove difficult and there may be obstacles to overcome along the way. In order to transcend adversity, an individual will often need to maintain diligence and perseverance to...

The Digging Skeleton and Bone Dreams are poems written by Seamus Heaney during a time of conflict between England and Ireland. He writes poems in hope to bring peace and to stop the fighting and bloodshed. He reflects this mindset in his poems...

Heritage appears as a central theme both to ‘Translations’ and ‘District and Circle’. Heritage can be described within the context of these texts as a set of ideas, traditions or explicit values that gives a sense of identity or belonging to a...

‘I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering’ (Robert Frost).

The art of discovery has long since marked the progression of humankind through a process of finding unique and unsought information that is able to...

If there is one thing that almost every single person in world has in common, it is an existential fear of death. The subconscious thought that eventually reaches a sudden, overwhelming, hyper-realistic tipping point that we have been internally...

To bridge the gap between the inner and outer self, Heaney in "Badgers" evokes a sense of fear through the use of various techniques - namely, through the symbolism of the badgers themselves. What the badgers truly represent is open to...