Seamus Heaney Reads His Poem, ‘Digging’

An extract from ‘Digging’ by Seamus Heaney - a poem which takes root in your senses. It strains with the freight of departure from one way of life to another - an act of labour, reflection and fracture simultaneously. The poet meditates on his writing as a craft - as a manual, unearthing process, likened to his father’s potato digging. And whilst reflecting on the writing process, the poem seems to exert itself, sluicing the reader with present participles and digging into its own form to prove

'Digging' by Seamus Heaney (poem only)