(National Poetry Month, Day 10)
Writing can be hard work, but its rewards are great—this can be said of many other types of work, too. “Digging” is one of my favorite Seamus Heaney poems. It covers gardening, potatoes, turf-cutting, family traditions, and time travel; what’s not to love? The best thing about this poem, in my opinion, is that we can actually hear the shovel and the turf-cutter going into the ground, and we can see, smell, and feel the ground these implements open. Reading “Digging” “awaken[s] in my head” consciousness of the “living roots” that have informed my own ideas about work and about writing.
The concept of writing as an archaeological act informs much of Heaney’s poetry, and this poem is a good entry-point for Heaney’s “bog poems,” which explore the individual’s, Ireland’s, and the world’s past.
Join me on this short trip back in time, through layers of gravelly, then root-laden and waterlogged soil, straight into our collective unconscious and our day-to-day present.
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.
P.S. To see and hear some turf cutting, click here.
The Graceful Grammarian 
Dear Graceful Grammarian, Thank you for sharing this interesting insight into, “The concept of writing as an archaeological act.” This is so true, and I often find myself “digging” into my past, and thus that of my family’s, when writing. When thinking of my mother’s coming of age and uprbinging in Brooklyn, I have to dig through my memories of her storytelling through the years, until those vivid details of her aunt and uncle’s luncheonette (where her cousin stole the expensive Pall Mall cigarettes) and my Italian great-grandfather singing opera in his barbershop unfold as if I, too, were there, standing beside her with her Buster Brown haircut and saddle shoes. Through all of her “talk-story” I remember as a little girl feeling like my mother’s friend (not just her daughter) back in 1950’s Brooklyn and then, Queens, NY. The aromas of my grandmother’s pastina soup waft back, once again. Thanks for this thought-provoking and excellent correlation to Heaney’s poetry!
Thanks for sharing this reflection, Gabrielle! I find it fascinating how much our family narrative influences who we are, and even creates memories that we would never have on our own.