Creative Works

‘Digging’ by Seamus Heaney is a free verse poem that begins with a steady iambic rhythm which continues into the second line where it is suddenly interrupted with a trochee, ‘snug as’. By reversing the steady heartbeat rhythm of the iambs, the trochee introduces a moment of tension that not only mimics the click of a trigger, it also gives the poet the opportunity to make creative use of the traditional connection of the trochee to death. But instead of using the trochee to mourn a physical death, Heaney skilfully uses it to signal the ‘death’ of an ancestral lifestyle. Masterly he contrasts the digging of his father and grandfather, with spade in hand, with the intellectual life of the poet, pen in hand. He captures what he is missing in his life, the gritty, physicality of the manual labour of his forefathers, with active muscular verbs – ‘straining’, ‘heaving’, ‘stooping’, ‘slicing’. And mournfully reflects that he has no spade to follow men like them.

As the title suggests, the activity of digging, literally with a spade and metaphorically with a pen, is the thread that binds three generations together. Digging is repeated three times in the text, twice to describe the speaker’s memory of his father planting potatoes, and once as the single-word ending to his memory of his grandfather cutting turf. This clear repetition of the title returns the narrative from recollections and remembrance – ‘the living roots’ in the speaker’s head – to the self-conscious present. The poet signals this transition with a series of memorable images and sense impressions: synaesthesia, viz the ‘cold smell’ of potato mould in memory of his father; alliteration and onomatopoeias in ‘the squelch and slap/Of soggy peat’ and the assonance of ‘curt cuts’, to end his grandfather narrative.

These are representative of a range of the literary devices that Heaney uses to great effect in his poem. In contrast to the natural, conversational rhythms contained within this free verse poem, he uses deliberate shifts in cadence to mirror the metaphorical depth of his 'living roots'. The pen, which begins as a provocative weapon-like simile (‘snug as a gun’), transmutes into a tool of labour. Digging, the central metaphor and motif of the poem, is for the poet a cerebral activity which he admits is not the same as digging with a spade and the special skills this requires:

      “By God, the old man could handle a spade.
      Just like his old man.”

It is no accident that ‘the old man’ (the father) in the first line of the fifth stanza is positioned directly above ‘his old man’ (the grandfather) in the second line. Continuity in the family relationship and the skill with a spade passed from father to son is underscored here by repetition and by the physical layout of the words on the page. Does this provide an inkling of what the speaker might be thinking? Is he regretting the life choices he is making? Is the spade mightier than the pen? If the thought crosses his mind, it soon disappears.

The poem, ending with a near but not exact reprise of the first two lines, firmly asserts that the pen is not a weapon—it is a metaphorical spade. The poem closes with a distinct declarative line, ‘I’ll dig with it’, replacing the original simile. This sharp, rhythmic conclusion creates a forward momentum that Heaney uses effectively to resolve his internal conflict. This ending makes it abundantly clear that this farmer’s son’s relationship with his father and grandfather has not died. In his chosen life as a poet, Heaney is empowered to use his pen to dig into his heritage. This seminal poem perfectly sets the stage for the rest of Heaney's debut 1966 collection, “Death of a Naturalist”.