This podcast is designed for students studying poems from the AQA Anthology. You can read the full script of this podcast by clicking on the information icon at the end of the description section of i-tunes. If you're using an iPod, press the middle button two or three times until you reach the description field, which contains the full text. You can scroll through the text using the iPod's scroll wheel.

Each Literature poetry episode is broken into five sections. The first section provides a reading and a summary of the poem. The second, third and fourth sections look at the themes and ideas of the poem, its structure and the language of the poem. These are the kinds of things you need to write about in the exam. The fifth section will consider which poems you might compare with this one and look at the kind of questions in which you could use this poem, as well as other web links that you could consult.

In this episode we'll look at Seamus Heaney's poem, "Digging".

A reading and a summary.

First, listen to the poem being read.

In the first two stanzas of "Digging", Heaney describes his father digging in the flowerbeds below his window. This reminds him in the third and fourth stanzas of how his father used to dig drills (or trenches) for potatoes twenty years previously. Then in stanza six, Heaney describes how, as a child, he once took some milk to his grandfather who was digging peat in a bog. Stanza seven describes the smells, sounds and touch of the digging, but Heaney explains that he cannot dig in the same way as his father and grandfather. In the final stanza, which echoes the first almost exactly, Heaney tells us that he will 'dig' with his pen.

Themes and ideas

Now we're going to think about the themes and ideas of the poem, its structure and the language the poet uses. In these sections there will be questions for you to think about. If you like, when a question is asked, pause the recording and think about it. You may have to refer back to the poem. When you think you've got an answer, continue playing the cast. Remember, even if your answer is different, it might not be wrong. Providing you've got a reason and some evidence from the poem to back it up, your answer might be just as good, if not better.

Now we'll take a look at the themes of the poem. Remember, a theme is an idea that the writer is trying to explain to you.

In "Digging", the themes are: fathers and sons, memory and writing.

Heaney uses the idea of digging to connect himself with his father and his grandfather. Heaney belongs to a family of diggers, and he feels that he has to continue the tradition. His digging is different: he digs with his pen, but he would like to think it is a kind of digging nonetheless.

Can you tell what Heaney thinks of his father and grandfather from the poem?

Heaney seems to have a great deal of respect for both his father and his grandfather. The sound of his father's digging is 'clean', as if he doesn't make any mistakes, he is in a perfect rhythm when he digs, and when he describes in greater detail in the fourth stanza how his father digs, he makes his father's movements sound very precise, as if he is operating a complicated piece of machinery. For example he mentions the 'lug' and the way in which the shaft of the spade was 'levered firmly' against his knee. Heaney is proud of his father, and exclaims: 'By God, the old man could handle a spade./Just like his old man.' He is also proud of his grandfather, boasting that he cut more turf in a day than 'any other man on Toner's bog.'

What does the poem have to say about memory and remembering?

Sometimes you can be reminded of a particular time in the past by hearing a song or smelling a certain smell. This is what happens to Heaney here. In stanza seven, he explains that the smell of potato mould, the sounds of squelching and slapping of the peat and the feel of the sharp edges of the turf are the things which remind him of seeing his father and his grandfather digging. Heaney talks of how 'living roots awaken in my head'. He is describing two kinds of roots: the roots through which his father's and grandfather's spades cut and also his family's roots. He is reminded that digging is one of the things which connects his father and grandfather to each other, and his father and his grandfather to him..

Finally in this section, what does the poem have to do with writing?

Heaney says that he does not have a spade to follow his father and his grandfather. He seems to suggest that although he is not carrying on the family tradition of digging the ground, he is digging into his memory using his pen. His father and his grandfather had as their tool the spade, Heaney has his pen.

Structure

Now let's look at the structure of the poem.

Look at the way the poem has been laid out on the page. What do you notice about the number of lines in each of the first four stanzas? Why do you think the poem is laid out like this?

The first stanza has two lines, the second three, the third four and the fourth, five.

Heaney uses the structure of the poem to show how deep he is digging into the past. We could say that just as when you dig in the ground you get deeper and deeper, so in the first few stanzas, Heaney digs deeper and deeper, further and further back, into his past, until he reaches, in stanza five, the time of his grandfather.

Language

Now we'll think about the language which Heaney is using.

Heaney uses a simile in the first stanza. What is it and why do you think he uses that particular image? Remember, a simile is a comparison using the words 'like' or 'as'.

The simile is 'snug as a gun'. It is surprising to see a pen compared to a gun, but Heaney is trying to explain how powerful his pen could be. Just as a gun can fire and kill, so Heaney says his pen has a similar kind of potential, although here he is creating life by describing his father and grandfather in the poem.

In the next stanza, Heaney uses two examples of alliteration. Remember, alliteration is the repetition of the same consonant sound in words that are next to each other, like 'a coarse croaking', here the letter 'c' is alliterated. So, where are the instances of alliteration in stanza two and why does Heaney use them? You might want to listen to the poem being read again to help you spot them.

Heaney uses two examples in line 4. First, he talks of how the 'spade sinks' and what it sinks into: the 'gravelly ground'. So, the letter 's' is alliterated in the first example and the letter 'g' in the second. Buy why? Heaney is trying to give a sense of what it might sound like to dig. The repeated sounds allow us to imagine what it must sound like to dig. A spade going into ground might make a 'ssss' sound, and if you were digging into gravel, there might be a 'gr' sound. By alliterating the words, Heaney also therefore creates a kind of onomatopoeia: when the words sound like the thing they are describing.

But there are some better examples of onomatopoeia in stanza seven. Can you find them and decide why you think Heaney has used them?

Heaney uses two in this stanza: 'squelch' and 'slap'. Both words sound like what they describe: for instance if you slap something, it makes a sound like 'slap'. Heaney is using these to try and draw you into the scene he is describing to allow you to imagine yourself there more effectively.

Of course the major linguistic technique that Heaney uses in this poem is metaphor. He compares the real digging that his father and grandfather did to his own digging, using his pen to dig into his family's past and write a poem about it. In fact this type of metaphor is called an extended metaphor, because Heaney uses it again and again throughout the poem.

Comparisons and possible questions

Let's think, finally, about which poems you might compare with this one, and the kinds of questions in which you could use this poem.

Remember, in the exam you will have to compare four poems: two from the pre 1914 selection and two from the post 1914 section.

If you were given a question about family or parents and children, you could compare this poem to: "Follower" (also about Heaney's relationship with his father) or Gillian Clarke's poems "Catrin" and "Baby-sitting". From the pre 1914 collection, you might compare it to "On My First Sonne" and "The Affliction of Margaret". Other poems share the theme of memory and remembering, for instance Gillian Clarke's "Cold Knap Lake" and one of Heaney's other poems: "At a Potato Digging". The pre 1914 poems "On My First Sonne" and "The Affliction of Margaret" are also about remembering.

What other poems could you compare with "Digging"?

For more revision material on this and other Literature poems, go to the Year 11 page on the Park House website: http://www.westberks.org/GroupHomepage.asp?GroupID=2423

You might also try the BBC Bitesize site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english_literature/

Remember, you can find the links to these pages, as well as the full script of this podcast by clicking on the information icon at the end of the description section of i-tunes or by finding the description section of the file in your iPod.

Good luck with your work!

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