A tribute to the works of Seamus Heaney.

I hated poetry as a youngster, and even more so, when I was a school girl, because my old-fashioned Grammar School English teacher made it so boring and inaccessible. I avoided poetry at all costs at university, until I couldn't any more, and then I actually found myself loving 'abstract poetry' of all things. (Check out the works of Wallace Stevens. Loved them!)

And then I became an English teacher. (I ended up with a very inspiring A Level teacher, thankfully!) And I had to teach poetry. And I thought I could do it better. I led an A Level English Literature class through Seamus Heaney's 'The Burial at Thebes', a translation of 'Antigone' by Sophocles. I was mesmerised by his poetic masterpiece, and how he could mix his sophisticated understanding of the setting and the themes, but make it so accessible and so 'every day' in many ways at the same time. I taught the work with passion, and with total admiration for the man who created it.

It was because of this play, and how it had captured me, that I decided to do an MA on the theme of ritual in Heaney's poetry. As a fellow 'Ulster' native, I revelled in his use of local dialect in poems like 'Aye' and his focus on rural Irish work in 'Follower' and 'Digging'.

I actually wrote to him, and received a wonderful letter back, not long before he died. The letter is one of my most cherished possessions. I cried hard the day he died.

During my never-ending, and quite addictive research, I found myself coming back to this poem in particular. It is from 'Clearances' (in his collection, 'The Haw Lantern'), and is one of a series of sonnets in tribute to his mother.

3.

'When all the others were away at Mass

I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.

They broke the silence, let fall one by one

Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:

Cold comforts set between us, things to share

Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.

And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes

From each other's work would bring us to our senses.

~

So while the parish priest at her bedside

Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying

And some were responding and some crying

I remembered her head bent towards my head,

Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives-

Never closer the whole rest of our lives.'

Seamus Heaney, Haw Lantern.

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I find myself filling up with tears every time I read the poem. The tender moment in the simple and ordinary task of peeling potatoes is powerful. The mundane activity of peeling 'the spuds' for the Sunday lunch is more profound than the lofty ritual performed by the priest. And the closeness in the comfortable silence lasts forever in the poet's memory. The poem's cadence of everyday speech, and the apparently simple language are excruciatingly emotive for me. I adore this poem, and I return to it often.

There are many, many more of Heaney's poems I recommend you read. Here are some of my favourites:

* 'Bogland' from Door into the Dark;

* 'Bog Queen' from North;

* 'Funeral Rites' from North;

* 'The Grauballe Man' from North;

* 'Punishment' from North;

* 'Aye' from Station Island;

* 'Old Smoothing Iron' from Station Island.

There is a poem for everyone. I hope you find your favourite.

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to have a look at my other pieces.