The title poem in Heaney’s debut poetry collection Death of a Naturalist, published in 1966, ‘Death of a Naturalist’ is a deceptively simple poem about how the fascination and curiosity we feel in early childhood gives way to fear and disgust when we reach adolescence. You can read ‘Death of […]
The greatest poems by Seamus Heaney selected by Dr Oliver Tearle Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) was one of the greatest and most popular English-language poets of the late twentieth century, and he continued to write into the current century. He was also the best-loved of the group of Irish poets who […]
A reading of a classic Heaney poem ‘Digging’ appeared in Seamus Heaney’s first collection, Death of a Naturalist, in 1966. Like a number of the sonnets by Tony Harrison – who was born two years before Heaney – ‘Digging’ is about a poet-son’s relationship with his father and the sense […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle Seamus Heaney’s ‘Blackberry-Picking’ is one of the great twentieth-century poems about disappointment, or, more specifically, about that moment in our youth when we realise that things will never live up to our high expectations. Heaney uses the specific act of picking blackberries to explore this theme. […]