The poem appeared in the recent Edexcel IGCSE English Literature exam. This sound file is my give back note session prepared for the possibility of a Covid19-forced early half term. https://jwpblog.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/adolescent-view-give-back-sound.m4a A page from my onenote folder is available …
Tag: poetry analysis
Follower, Heaney: thoughts on metre and language
Follower -note the lack of an article suggesting the whole range of potential meanings and sub-meanings to the word. Heaney is writing literally of a boy who followed his father around the fields and farm in his youth and who …
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Death of a Naturalist: a study in innocence.
In Death of a Naturalist, the title poem of the collection, Heaney explores ideas which will be key to these poems – the conflict inherent between innocence and experience and the sense of terror which drives a young man towards …
Heaney: Digging and the search for ‘the good turf’.
The collection Death of a Naturalist opens with the poem Heaney called a ‘strength giver’: Digging. If Personal Helicon summarises the ideas of the collection, it is this poem which asserts Heaney’s decision to honour the authenticity and labour of …
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Churning Day: Heaney. An analysis.
Another of the poems in the collection which considers the aging process as a conflict between innocence and experience, ultimately resulting in an epiphany as the older Heaney recognises the mundanity of something hitherto regarded as bordering on the magical …
On Personal Helicon: Heaney.
Personal Helicon for Michael Longley As a child, they could not keep me from wells And old pumps with buckets and windlasses. I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss. One, in …
Exploring Blackberry Picking: Heaney. An essay.
Blackberry Picking is a poem rich in imagery and symbolism -from the macabre linking of the fruit to a ‘plate of eyes’ capable of staring at the young Heaney and intensifying his sense of guilt, to the link between this …
