Examine the influence of Heaneys childhood upon his poetry

Examine the influence of Heaneys childhood upon his poetry

Introduction

Seamus Heaney was born on a farm in county Derry in North Ireland on

April 13th 1939 he was one of nine children.

The Heaney family had lived in that area for centuries and had been

farmers for generations. He grew up in the country and the countryside

was a crucial focus point for his poetry, this is shown in the poems

The early purges, The forge, Digging, Follower and Death of a

naturalist.

He grew up in a rural community which was very important to him as

well as village traditions, history and religion.

Nature was important to him. This is illustrated in Death of a

naturalist and Follower. He looked back to the farm for inspiration in

his writing when he writes about the farm in Digging and the follower.

In Follower, Seamus writes about his father Patrick. Seamus had a

great deal of respect and admires his father for his farming skill

again this is evident in Follower. Seamus and his father separated as

Seamus grew smarter and away from the farming life and towards poetry

and literature.

Heaney was Catholic and at school he became aware of the Catholic and

Protestant problems in Ireland which later inspired him to write about

politics and the problems in Ireland.

Heaney wrote very realistic poems about life in the countryside and

wanted to show what it was really like (rough and hard).This is clear

in Death of a Naturalist and Early purges.

When he was twelve he won a scholarship to St Colun's boarding school

in Derring later he won another scholarship to Queens university where

he studied English. When he was at university he started to write

poems and the increasing problems in Ireland became apparent to him

and his poems examined these problems.

In the early sixties he wrote his first volume Death of a naturalist.

Analyzing four Heaney Poems

I have chosen Death of a naturalist, Follower, Digging and The early

purges because I think they represent the influences that Heaneys

childhood had on his poems.

Death of a naturalist was one of Heaneys' first poems and was the

title of his first volume. The poem symbolizes the innocence of

childhood because he uses simple and uncomplicated language. The

teacher in the poem is very patronizing and explains sex and mating in

a very toned down way she said, 'The daddy frog was called the

bullfrog and how he croaked and how the mammy frog laid hundreds of

little eggs and this was frogspawn'.

The early part of the poem is seen through the eyes of a child and as