Seamus Heaney. Digging. #poetry #irishwriter #Ireland #booklover

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Today is the anniversary of the publication day of Seamus Heaney's first poetry collection Death of a Naturalist.

[00:00:13]May 19th, 1966 his debut collection and the first poem in that collection was Digging. So, in honor of uh the publication [music] date, I will read you Digging.

[00:00:32]Between my finger and my thumb, the squat pen rests, snug as a gun.

[00:00:38]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 flower beds bends low, comes up 20 years away, stooping in rhythm through potato drills where he was digging.

[00:00:58]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.

[00:01:17]By God, the old man could handle a spade, just like his old man.

[00:01:23]My grandfather cut more turf in a day than any other man on Toner's bog.

[00:01:30]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.

[00:01:50]The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an age through living roots awaken in my head. But I've no spade to follow men like [music] them.

[00:02:05]Between my finger and my thumb, the squat pen rests.

[00:02:10]I'll dig with it.

[00:02:12]My favorite poem, possibly of all time.

[00:02:16]Reminds me of my childhood and my father and his father and a time in Ireland that is very, very special. I'll include here a picture of Seamus Heaney standing in a peat bog.

[00:02:31]Have a wonderful day. Happy birthday to the publication of The Naturalist by Seamus Heaney.