`Blackberry Picking' by Seamus Heaney focuses on childhood and childhood memories through an account of a blackberry-picking expedition that Heaney has become accustomed to and appears to view as a post-summer ritual. Heaney utilises many writing techniques to get his message across, and during this essay I will be looking closely at the poet's thoughts and feelings of his childhood and childhood memories. I will first off investigate Heaney's views of his own early views on childhood.

Heaney's views of childhood are given subtly at the very start of the poem when Heaney says, in line 1: ."..given heavy rain and sun" and, in my own opinion, this gives some kind of light and understanding into Heaney's summer, being good at times, yet at other times dreary and miserable, and this also refers to his own life up till the point the poem was set. Also, his first main...