The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Heaney, Seamus. “Digging.” Poetry Foundation, 1966, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47555/digging.

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

“Digging” is the first poem in Seamus Heaney’s first poetry collection, which meant it would have been many readers’ first experience with the poet. Its place in his canon is fitting as it illustrates the speaker deviating from their family’s roots as agricultural laborers and turning towards literature instead. The poem serves as the poet’s own call to action to begin “digging” out the words and images that will become his lifelong career.

Like other poems in Death of a Naturalist, this poem focuses on the natural world and memories of the poet’s upbringing in rural Ireland. Later, much of the poet’s work would circle around the violence of the Irish nationalist border conflict, and this theme is hinted at here in the poem’s opening lines. “Digging” follows a writer’s descent into the memory of their father and grandfather who worked the land.